Faux
by photojourney
Summary: ୧ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ୨ (GEN, OC-centric)
1. White

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** this will be a short fic. i mean, this'll probably be the longest chapter. basically me trying to get back into the KHR grooves. enjoy! review appreciated!

* * *

1\. WHITE

* * *

She wakes up in an old, brown tomb.

Lifeless. Barren. Complete with little dust motes dancing in the corners.

Aside from the distinctly _lacking_ levels of oxygen, it's not a bad place to wake up. The warm light shining through the cracks in the walls makes for nice shadows. The ceiling has all sorts of ornate patterns carved into it. Quite fancy, really.

She sits up and swings her legs over the bed. Her body feels like an angry stampede used her as carpet material. She feels…not good. Tired. The world might start spinning soon.

"_I –"_ she says, and stops as the sound grates over her throat like screeching metal. Like a dying horse. Like swords scraping together.

It brings back memories.

As tempting as it is to sit back and sleep for a while longer, she gets the feeling that her rest has already taken up a lot of time. Too much time.

Last time she was awake, this place was new and bright. No dust motes. The designs on the ceiling were fresh, and her friends dropped by sometimes with fruit and neat stories. Everything smelled like pomegranates and grass and laughter_. _That was before she fell asleep alone.

The air is kind of musty. It's gross. Unsettling. As if this place has been here for centuries.

She pulls herself to her feet and approaches the mass of rocks on the far end of the room. Her fingers tap across the crackly texture of it. There used to be an entrance here. The fact that it collapsed like this is surprising, considering that there shouldn't have been much burden on the frame.

This way is blocked, and she isn't strong enough to plow through it. Still, oxygen has to come from somewhere.

A flash of sunlight catches her eye. She leans over and sees how a bit of the room has crumbled away into a small crevice. Strange, how fragile the architecture has turned out to be. She catches the mild scent of dew and holds onto it.

It's a tiny space to crawl through. With a bit of pushing and pressing, she worms her way out, before resorting to breaking off pieces of the hole's edges to fit her legs through. The first thing in her line of sight is a massive wall of dirt, and a few clumps of grass on top of it.

Her breath blows through her lungs on butterfly wings. Light. Faint. Not as healthy as it should be.

She climbs to the top of the wall, taking great handfuls of soil along the way. Her eyes sting at the sight of the vibrant field, and the white spots of sunlight reflected off the trees. The sky is pure, ribbon-blue. Everything is made of color.

Nothing makes sense, because –

This isn't the same forest she fell asleep to.

She stands up and sways, not used to gaining her balance so quickly. Her toes tingle from the raindrops collected on the grass.

Her tomb will have to lie abandoned from now on. Something is incredibly off about this place. Her intuition hums with some terrible forewarning. She needs to explore. Find others. Find answers.

The next few steps are shaky at best. And they say naps are supposed to energize people.

* * *

This has to be some sort of joke.

She isn't taken off-guard very easily. Usually never. She likes to roll with things. But this is going too far, even for her.

The forest is almost completely gone now. It's still near the ocean, which is a relief – at least some things haven't changed – but still not enough to comfort her when she catches sight of all the emptiness. There's nothing, basically. Absolutely nothing.

She remembers there used to be farmland here.

The only spot of life on the horizon is a row of white squares, and some more little structures behind them. It takes her an hour to walk there. Closer inspection reveals one of the squares to be a house, although she's never seen anything like it. For one, it's huge – more than fifty hands high, she bets – and plain, with plants in pots scattered in the back end and a pair of bells hanging on the wooden structures out front.

Secondly, there's something else in front of it. Fairly large, but not in comparison to the house itself. White. Shiny. Metallic.

In the middle of inspecting whatever it is, as well as wracking her brains for some sort of memory of having seen it before, she catches sight of a person approaching from the side. An older woman, with a wrinkly, spotted face and kind, confused eyes. Gloved hands. Wispy yellow-white hair falling down her shoulders like a mane.

"_Good noon_," she says. "_Is this your place?"_

The old woman frowns, opens her mouth, and a string of random, complex syllables flow out. Different sounds, different accent, different everything.

_"Sorry. Didn't catch that."_

After a thoughtful pause, the woman ushers her inside.

The house is made of wood and marble. A part of their wall is made up entirely of glass, probably so they have a clear view of the sea. It has a homely feel to it, despite the empty space in each room and the fact that there are actually no more than three occupants.

The owner of the house is apparently the old woman. She has a nephew, possibly grandson, with messy blonde hair and blue eyes and too many freckles. The third person, a small baby girl, sits in her cradle next to the window and warbles out little songs once in a while.

She doesn't know what the old woman and the boy talk about, but most of it is arguing. Quiet. Apprehensive. They give her contemplative looks on occasion.

Eventually, the boy scowls and gives her a book, muttering up a storm in his language. She looks at the front cover. Unreadable.

When they give her expectant glances, she flips it open and brushes through the pages. Each one, she notices, has a different style of marks, or letters. Her eyes skim across each section until they settle on a few very familiar letters.

_"Is this a kind of translation?"_ she asks pointlessly as she shows them the pages. They're filled with basic words and phrases, like 'hello', 'how are you', 'nice weather we're having'.

They snatch it out of her grasp. The old woman gives her a beaming smile and says, in a slow, heavily-slurred voice, _"Hello, miss."_

_"Italian,"_ murmurs the boy as his eyes flicker over the pages. _"Language…Toscana?"_

Their voices shape the syllables strangely, in contrast to how fluently they spoke their own language before. It startles a laugh out of her, even as relief floods through her bones. At least they're somewhere on the same page. _"Yes! Yes, I speak Toscana!"_

The boy flips through the book again and hands it to her. His hands are clammy. She looks down at the pages and finds an entirely new language – except some of these letters are actually kind of familiar. The curves and slants of them ring a few bells.

"English," she proclaims. Forcing the mesh of vowels and consonants onto her tongue is more difficult than necessary. Also troublesome. "I...know. Say…English. You say English?"

When she looks up, the boy has already run off somewhere. His footsteps make thumping noises against the ceiling above their heads. The woman sits them down on these large, squishy chairs. "_What is…your name?_" the housekeeper asks, stumbling over the sounds as she glances down at the book again.

She grins. "Jai."

* * *

The first thing they do after introducing themselves is take her to the bath. Jai finds herself in a plain blue room with a long white basin. When the old woman, Julia, turns the metal handle, water sprays out of the tube at the top of the wall. She has no idea how it works, but it's great. Really efficient.

When she comes out a bit cleaner and sporting new clothes, the boy – Devin – comes up to her. _"Where are you from_?" he asks in her language.

He probably spent a few minutes working out that single phrase. She respects the effort. _"Italia."_

_"Not…country. Where is…house? Where is your home?"_

Jai pauses at that. She isn't stupid. The dust in the tomb, the razing of that forest, all the things in this house that work in mysterious and mystical ways – it doesn't take much more than that for her to come up with an answer. "I no know."

"No know?" Julia motions both of them to the cedar table. "You don't know? _You are…lost?"_

"No, no."

Devin squints at her and says something fast. Then – _"Your name? Last name?"_

Jai thinks for a long time. The truth makes her a bit sad, but not too sad. Just kind of mellow. "No. No _last name."_

At once, Devin rounds on Julia. The woman frowns back, and they erupt into a flurry of fast words. Both of them have frowns on their faces now. Jai looks out the glass wall and sees three layers: the sky, the sea, and a long strip of never-ending sand.

In the end, Julia takes her up the stairs and into a small room. The cabinets have little seashells for knobs. "_Rest now_," she orders stiltedly.

Jai lies down and closes her eyes, and the ocean waves lull her to sleep.

* * *

Jai's best friend has become the book of Italian to English translations. She's willing to take it down to the beach and whisper sweet nothings to the front cover if that's what it takes to show her appreciation. Reading dictionaries in foreign languages is her new hobby in life.

After the housekeeper and the boy learn that she has no home, no relatives, and no last name, they let her stay. Devin gets hot-faced sometimes, usually whenever Jai's around. She doesn't really get it, but it's fun to see the look on his face. It scrunches up. Swells, too. Like a tomato.

She likes sitting on the squishy chairs – the_ couches_, even though they're too comfy to be couches – and watching the ocean. Her body heals better this way. She learns how to say 'thank you' in English fluently, especially to Julia, who just smiles as if giving random people shelter is the natural thing to do. That's insane.

The housekeeper spends lots of time with the baby girl, singing and reading to her. Meanwhile, Devin takes walks on the beach and tends to the flowers. They have a pretty nice garden. Roses and magnolias and everything.

One time, Jai gets bored. She goes out the backdoor and kneels on the grass next to him. "Hey!"

Devin glares at her. His fingers are mottled with dirt, just like hers were when she climbed out of that tomb. "What?"

"Hello to you, is what." She watches him pat down a few ground creepers with more force than necessary. "You're…have fun? Having fun?"

He bites his lip. "Your grammar is horrible. I mean..._bad. You…speak bad."_

Jai laughs and pats him on the back. She takes great joy in making him miserable. "Give me book. Book to speak good. I learn just words here."

He rolls his eyes and mutters something too fast for Jai to pick up, but she catches a few things. Like 'stupid' – she knows that one. Also, 'police'. 'Turn…in'. 'Stranger'.

As the silly boy storms off, Jai looks down at the ground creepers and hovers her hands over them. A faint glow surrounds them, hot-golden-white and almost-pure and knocking her breath away as she expels them. At the same time, the leaves on the plants shiver as they move toward the light.

She retreats to the couch feeling utterly exhausted. It'll take years to replenish her Sun Flames at this rate.

* * *

It turns out that Julia's retired. She used to work in some sort of big business, which makes sense, given how big their house is. Devin, on the other hand, is still in school. He says he hates it. All of it. Students, teachers – England's entire educational system.

The little girl in the cradle doesn't know how to speak yet. Whenever Julia asks her to take care of the house while both of them are away, Jai likes to sit near her and show off what little Sun Flames she still has. The shimmery lights make her laugh.

Jai sings songs, too, which the little girl tries to mimic. Her burbling noises are high and off-key. Like bird song. It's pleasant to hear.

Most of the time, Jai reads her word books and grammar books with live commentary. "_They put an 's' after 'lamp' for 'lamps', but not after 'sheep' for 'sheeps',"_ she tells the girl. "_That doesn't make any sense. What kind of language is this, anyway? Don't tell me you're eager to learn all this when you get older."_

The baby makes a face. Jai high-fives her.

Devin walks through the front door and finds them just like this. He makes a weird face and turns to leave, but then watches them for a while. He doesn't seem to want any attention, so Jai doesn't give him any.

Finally, she turns to stare at him. "What is her name?"

The boy stares back. "You don't know?"

"Hey, you talk too fast! I can never keep up and learn it."

"It's Kayla." He glances at the baby again. "We call her Kay."

Jai grins at both of them. Funny, how coincidences work. "Nice name! My…sister's name is Aiva. It sounds the same."

"Yeah, 'cause they rhyme." Devin frowns at her for the hundredth time in the past two days. "Before, you said you don't have any family."

She reaches down and pats Kay's head. "Aiva is dead. Besides, we were not...relative. We had no same parent." Her smile must look sad to both of them. "Kay and you are sister and brother?"

Devin clenches his fists. "Yeah."

Jai looks up and sees his face. Pained. Heart-broken. It isn't hard for her to put two and two together, especially since Julia is far too old to be a mother to this little girl, and she hasn't seen anyone who could possibly be their real parents.

She doesn't know what to say to this kid, especially when she's still trying to fit into a world centuries after she fell asleep, and everyone she used to know might as well be gone, too. It hurts. Hurts like fire.

"Aiva is dead for many years now," she says at last. Her own words seem kind of hollow. "It gets better."

The darkness in Devin's eyes says he doesn't believe it for a second.

* * *

One day, Jai feels good. So good, in fact, that she feels like taking a walk on the beach. Julia, being the lovely woman she is, makes Devin accompany her for safety's sake. Just in case Jai feels like crumpling to the ground halfway across the shoreline.

She doesn't bother bringing shoes. The sand spilling over her toes feels cool, and kind of comforting. She likes how the wind whips back her brown hair against her brown skin, likes how it makes her feel free for the first time in ages.

Devin leads her down to the water's edge, where she splashes water at him and laughs at his squawking sounds. They end up sopping wet. At some point, he decides to roll up his trousers, and they start searching for sand dollars in the greenish-blueish pools.

Jai stops to stretch, only to shout as a water sprays over her. She dives for the culprit and drags him beneath the waves.

Devin screams and kicks at her. "Stop! Stop! My clothes!"But Jai doesn't see anything particularly wrong with his clothes, so she grabs a handful of water and dumps it all over his face. Priceless.

He grabs onto her shoulders and dunks her into the pool. She snags a sand dollar on the way up and shows it to him. _"Found one!"_ she crows, slipping back into her native language.

The boy makes a 'why' sort of gesture with his hands and dunks her again.

They stop when Jai starts gasping for air, and Devin is kind enough to drag her back onto the sand. She can't stop laughing. This is great. So is Devin's scowl. _Immensely_ satisfying.

"_It's been forever since I went to the beach_," she tells him after a few minutes of basking in the sun.

"What?"

"_Oh, I mean_ – I haven't been here in a long time. At the sea."

He wrings the water off a part of his sleeve. "You're getting too good at English, you know. It's like you're learning too fast."

"I'm a genius! Proud of me?"

The boy kicks sand over her feet out of spite. "As if, lady."

"I have more sand dollars, still." She takes them out of her pockets and counts them. "Ten total. You?"

He does the same, and smirks. "Fourteen, loser."

Jai sits up. Unbelievable. Incredible. "Really?" She laughs, even though her sides hurt. "Agh, how are you so good?"

Devin shrugs and spins one of the shells around his fingers. "I did this a lot with my dad. Collecting shells and stuff. Before Kay was born, and Mum was still pregnant."

"Mm-hmm." Jai doesn't see any darkness in him anymore – just nostalgia. She likes it better this way, just personally. "Hey, sounds fun! Your parents were good people?"

His smile is pure. Happy. Perfect. "They were the best. The best ever. Everyone loved them." He did too.

"Julia takes care of you now. Is Julia a good person?"

"'Course she is. I just…miss my parents sometimes." He leans back on his elbows and scowls at the air, like the entire atmosphere offends him somehow. "It's not like anyone can blame me for that."

"I'm not blame you. I mean, blaming you. So you know." She gives him her biggest, widest grin, before deciding to share a little piece of herself. It's an equivalent exchange, anyway. A balance. "I had a friend. His name was Faux. He loved the sea – made us go with him lots of the time. You do…remind me of him."

He gives her a puzzled look. "What kind of name is Faux?"

"Our other friends were Hatz, and Dineva, and Aiva, and…you know, we all have weird names." Jai laughs at the sky and closes her eyes. Her eyelids look red when the sun shines through them. "I liked them a lot. We were great together."

When she looks at Devin again, the kid is staring at her. He seems kind of troubled. "Are you still friends with them?" he asks.

Jai shrugs. "Yeah! We will always be friends, like your parents will always be your parents. But I don't know where they are. I can't feel them."

"Feel them?"

"Find them," she amends quickly. "I don't even know if they are alive or dead." It's actually kind of terrifying if she thinks about it for a while, which is why she usually tries not to think about it. Not at all. "Maybe they are hiding for a strange reason. I don't know!"

She lets her smile drop, since this is actually a serious topic. "I think I'm going to leave your house soon, Devin."

He shoots upright. "What? Why?"

"I'm feeling better now, so soon I'm going to travel." Jai watches the seagulls dive just above the waves. "I have to look for something. It's very important." Understatement of the century, really. She couldn't even begin to describe its importance if she tried.

Suddenly, Devin gets to his feet. He looks stunned. Betrayed. Angry. "You can't just leave," he says bitterly. "My grandmother's been taking care of you this whole time and you're just going to run off, just like that? Aren't you going to repay her?"

"Of course, yeah." Jai sits up and frowns at him. "I'm very thankful for you both. I will repay you. But why are you getting angry?"

He grits his teeth. "I don't know. It isn't right. You show up one day looking like a corpse without any sort of background or last name or anything, and now you're leaving before any of us get the chance to learn about you. It's just – not right."

Jai laughs at that. "You want to get to know me before I leave? Weird! You say before you don't want friends!"

Before his cheeks can puff up, she stands up and brushes the sand off her shoulders. "We still have time to have fun," she reminds him. This kid – what a moron, she thinks in a fond sort of way. "I am not all better yet. When I am, I will thank Julia in a nice way. Maybe I can heal Kay's sickness for you?"

Devin freezes. "What sickness?"

She laughs at his dumbfounded expression. "Don't be stupid! Kay has been sick for a long time. Did you not know, boy?"

He stares at her. Her laughter dies in her throat.

Oh.

He really didn't know.

* * *

"Kay has lupus," Devin announces as he files into the room behind Julia, the baby cradled against his shoulder. They just came back from the hospital. The appointment took too many hours to count. Their faces are tight with worry.

Lupus. Never heard of it. "Do you mean loops?" Jai asks, even though that wouldn't make any sense either.

"No, lupus. It's a disease that turns your immune system against you. Her body – " The boy chokes off a word. "Her body doesn't know what's good and what's bad for her anymore."

Jai puts down her book. "How is Kay?"

Julia eases herself down on the couch like her bones are failing her. She looks tired. Weary. Her mouth has turned into a small grim line pushing her face inward. "She – well, the doctor says she's holding up right now. The symptoms are very small, but they may or may not get worse as she grows older. I'll have to pick up the medication tomorrow." The old woman puts a hand on her shoulder. "Jai, how did you know Kay was ill?"

"I knew since I first saw her that something was wrong with her. I didn't think you wouldn't know." Jai glances between the two of them. "Can the doctors cure her?"

Devin collapses next to his grandmother. "Lupus can't be cured. Just treated." He scrubs a hand across his face. "This _sucks."_

Jai frowns and looks at bright, blue-eyed Kay. That doesn't sound right. "How is there no cure? If she was not born with this lupus, then there should be a way to make her better. There is always...many...cure for these things."

"Yeah, well, doctor says there isn't one this time," Devin snaps. He shoves his hands in his pockets with too much force. "How could we not have noticed? I mean, if _you_ noticed, then – I mean, how were we supposed to – why does she have to be – "

With a smile, Jai pats the kid on the back. He looks like he's about to cry. Scream. Break something besides his own heart, seeing as that's smashed into pieces already. "Don't get angry. I knew because I could sense it. You couldn't have known at all."

Julia's eyes look up and pierce right through her. "What do you mean?"

She looks down at her hands. Her secret is supposed to be what it is – a _secret._

But Julia and Devin are kind, wonderful people. She owes them this much, at least. "Can I see Kay?" she asks.

The housekeeper picks up the little girl and puts her in Jai's lap. Kay coos and grabs Jai's thumb, probably to stick it in her mouth. "This is our secret now," Jai says to all of them. "Please don't tell anyone."

Devin's eyes shine warily, and maybe with a mite of fear. "What are you doing?"

Jai puts her hands on Kay's shoulders and lets them glow with the light of her Sun Flames. To her right, Julia lets out this quiet sort of gasp as the fire shimmers and strengthens. Kay simply claps her hands delightfully and squeals.

Jai ignores all of it and probes around for the problem. Kai's life force is bubbly, like light and water at the same time. Light-water.

Neat.

She goes deeper.

The root of the problem is easy to find. It's the dark, murky spot festering in the middle of all the nice, peaceful energy. Feeling it now, Jai can see why the doctors would think it's incurable. This thing has the potential to spread across her entire body, like a plague. Nasty.

Before the strain on her own Flames increases, Jai simply sends her Flames inward until they close around the dark, surround it, and swallow it whole. When her Flames recede, the spot is gone. Vanished.

An easy procedure. She pulls back, and the light in her hands flickers into nothing. Kay flails in disappointment.

Julia and Devin stare at her.

"She's all better now," Jai says, patting the little girl on the back. "This sickness was very small, and easy to fix. It's good that we found it before it grew."

Kay makes unintelligible noises at them.

"Y-You – what?" Devin rises to his feet, as does Julia. "You cured her? Is that what – what you just did? She's healed?"

Jai grins at them. "It's great, you think?"

Julia's hands hover above her mouth. "I've seen that light before," she whispers. "A long, long time ago. Like sunlight and fire – it's the power to _heal_, isn't it?"

She leans forward. This is a surprise. "You know about the Sun Flame?"

The old woman's eyes glisten with stars. Her words come out jumbled. "My father's friend had a fire like that. They were both in dark, dangerous business – they made enemies, you see. I watched him heal my father's wound – it was a big one, you know, cut right through his torso – and I thought he was going to die, but he didn't. Oh, and I thought I was only dreaming at the time – !"

Jai gets up and wraps Julia in a hug. "You weren't, though," she breathes. "It was real. Kay is better now."

Devin looks like he can hardly believe it.

In the background, Kay starts to sing.

* * *

The next morning, they go to the hospital again, just to make sure – and they come back ecstatic. "The doctors had no idea what to say!" Devin tells Jai between each breathless laugh. "They thought it was a miracle! They told us their diagnosis was a mistake, and then they _apologized_ – can you believe it?"

"Does this pay you back for everything?" Jai asks.

"Yeah, it does." The boy smiles back, looking truly at peace since he first introduced himself to her. "Thanks, Jai. I don't know how you did it."

That's the first time he's ever thanked her for anything.

"It's a secret, remember?" she reminds him.

They treat her much more warmly after that, which Jai didn't think was possible. They were already so nice already. But now Julia pulls her into one-armed hugs and runs a hand through her wavy hair, telling her she should tie it back more often (so she does), and Devin spends more time playing with Kay. He looks happier now.

Julia starts telling her about her father. "A very strict, no-nonsense man," she admits as she bustles about the kitchen. "Very independent. I hardly ever saw him, and when I did, he was usually with my mother."

"Did you love him?" Jai asks as she leans against the counter. Honestly, she would help Julia if she knew how to cook, but she'll probably burn off her fingers trying to work the toaster.

Julia chuckles. "Why, of course I did. I worried for him constantly. He loved me too, in his own, distant way. That was our sort of relationship." Her movements slow down. "My father lived a dangerous life. My mother and I knew how dirty his hands were. He lived in the 'underground', you could say, taking all sorts of jobs. At first we thought it was a gang. Then, the mafia. He never told us fully – it was too secretive for that."

She gives her a quick glance. "That's why I took you in when you showed up. I don't get along well with the police – I would never report anyone, that's for certain. I've known people from all walks of life, and so I gave you a room here." Her voice warms. "Even though Devin was _so sure_ you were a criminal who would steal our lives and possessions."

"Everyone's a criminal, I'm sure," Jai teases. "Did your father's friend do the same work, too?"

"The one with the Flames? Yes, I believe so." Julia shrugs and shakes her head, like it doesn't bother her in the slightest. "My father didn't even look surprised at the sight of that kind of ability. Just stood up and brushed himself off. Not a scratch on him. I think he worked with more than one person like that – people with your power."

Jai doesn't know why Flame users would find themselves in organizations like that, but she'll take that in stride, too. Like, yeah. Neat. Right on. "Maybe that's where I should look, then. I should look in the underground."

Julia's keen grey eyes meet hers. "Devin mentioned you're leaving because you're searching for something. Is it your friends? Other people like you?"

"Yeah," Jai says. "Something else, too."

"What is it?"

Jai shrugs and breaks eye contact first. Julia probably wouldn't know about it, anyway. She's looking for something rainbow. World-balancing.

Rather important.

* * *

Jai feels great – ten times greater than how she felt when she first woke up. She wants to jump off the roof. Climb a mountain. Run twelve laps around the equator.

Devin doesn't want her to do any of that. He wants her to stay. "You can't even cross the border of any country," he argues as he does his homework on the living room floor, and Jai tries to tackle some more translations (like Spanish and French and maybe Welsh). The rain patters incessantly outside. "You don't have an ID or anything."

Jai makes disapproving sounds in her throat. "The people's law is for children. I can do anything, kid."

A pencil goes flying in her direction. He doesn't like it when she calls him a kid, so she does it more often now that she knows. She snags it out of the air and praises her own reflexes.

"How come you don't have an ID?" Devin asks. "Do people even know you exist? Because I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't."

"No, not many people know about me. I was born in a village. It was small and secluded, and there wasn't any electricity or technology like what you have."

"No kidding! You don't even know how the oven works!"

Jai makes a funny face at him. "I do now!"

"Only because Julia taught you!" He shakes his head. "Did they teach you your…your Flame thing in that village? Is that why you've never learned about modern stuff – 'cause people wanted to keep your Flames a secret?"

She shrugs. "Kind of. You're close."

"Why do people hide it, though?" Devin fiddles with another pencil. "If everyone knew about Flames, maybe everyone could be cured of lupus. And…and other diseases like that, too. If it can do amazing things like that, like healing – "

"Flames are dangerous," Jai says as she watches the boy for a reaction. "They can be. They have the potential. Flames can be used as weapons."

He gapes at her. "Wait, really?"

She sighs and lets the air deflate from her body like a balloon. There's no real harm in telling him this, so long as he keeps quiet – which he probably will, since he's smart. "This power is like a sword. You can use it for weird things, like cutting down trees and putting butter on toast, but it's real purpose is to hurt. It hurts and it can kill. Some people use it for good, and other people use it for bad. Do you see how that works?"

"So…So you can do other things besides healing? Does it burn like a real fire?"

"It depends, I guess. There are different types of Flames. Each person falls into a category. I use Sun Flames, which can heal and strengthen. Other Flames can destroy, or calm, or obscure…" Jai taps her chin. Devin's eyes are wide enough to use as dinner plates. "You have a Flame inside you, too. So does Kay."

"Us?" he squeaks, looking younger than he actually is. "Does everyone have one?"

"Yeah, even Julia! But her body is aging, so she might not be able to draw it out of her anymore." She laughs at the sight of his round, curious face. "Everyone has potential, you know!"

"How do you do it? Use it?"

"I can't tell you. You might use it for bad things. Not - " As he rears up to object, she slaps him upside the head. " – that I think you'll be a bad person, but people will hurt themselves if they don't know how to wield a sword!"

Devin scowls at her. Grumpy. Petulant. "But I want to know how to heal, too! Not hurt or kill or do any of – of _that_ stuff, but just…help people, I guess. It'd be useful."

She grins and holds her face up with one hand. "You want to be a hero? But I won't be around to teach you! Besides, you can't use the Sun Flame. I can already tell."

"Oh." He droops a little. "You can?"

"Mm-hmm. Kay might be a Sun, though. It's not easy to tell for her. She could also be a Rain, or even a Sky – those are rare! You, on the other hand…anything but a Sun or a Cloud."

"What about Julia?"

"Storm. Definitely Storm." Jai watches the raindrops streak across the glass wall, like comets with watery tails. Poetic. "She could have been a great one, too! Her Flame was really strong once. It might have been passed down in her family."

"I don't know what any of this means – Rain, Cloud, Storm, whatever." Devin bites the inside of his cheek for a moment. "Can you do anything else besides healing?"

In truth, not much. "Hmm…I can make plants grow."

His face transforms. An accusatory finger gets thrust in her direction. "The ground creepers! That's why they're spreading out all over the place! It was you!"

"Ooh, I'm caught!" She bats his offending hand away. "I did that a while back. They look really nice now, don't they?"

"Yeah, we've got flowers blooming everywhere now. They're doing well. Julia's real pleased about it." He mimics her grin. "I can't believe that's 'cause of _you._ That's wicked. What else can you do?"

This kid doesn't look like he'll ever be satisfied. "When I'm fully recovered, I can teleport," she says, just to throw that out there.

"What? No!" His mouth makes a perfect circle. It makes her want to keel over and laugh forever.

"It's true, through!"

"How's that even _possible_?!"

"Neat thing about Sun Flames – speed of light. How about it?"

"But…But that defies physics!"

"Ooh, physics." Jai waves a dismissive hand. "Who cares? Flames break lots of laws about the world, all the time. You'll think it's insane."

"I _already_ think it's insane!" Devin leans forward with stars in his eyes. "How does it work? How far can you go?"

She almost hits him on the head again. This boy is too much. "Sun Flames aren't meant to be used in that way, so I can't go very far, and it takes a lot of energy. The farthest I've ever gone is…a mile, you'd say?"

He scrunches his nose. "Disappointing."

She tries to glare at him and ends up bursting into laughter instead. She needs to work on that. Then, Devin's mouth twitches upward and betrays him.

What a moron.

"I won't be able to teleport for a while," she admits after her sides start to ache and the laughter dies down between them. "I used my Flames too much for too long of a time, so they're taking a really long time to regenerate. It might be years before I can use them like normal again."

Devin frowns and throws another pencil at her. She catches that one, too. "But you're leaving pretty soon, right? Why aren't you staying until you're fully healed?" he asks.

"Oh, my body's fully healed. My Flames, on the other hand, could take a decade at most to build up again." Jai rolls over onto her back and stares at him upside-down. His hair looks like a complete mess, especially from this perspective. He says he'll never cut it, though, 'cause he's stubborn. "For now, I'm going to start travelling. I'll learn more languages and technology along the way. It'll be fun."

"When you come back and visit, you'll teach me how to use my Flames, right?"

"I guess I can. Why're you so eager?"

He gives her the strangest look, like she couldn't have asked a more idiotic question. "Because it's cool! I mean, you can _teleport_! Even if I'm not a Sun, my Flames have be useful for _something_!"

Jai laughs at how rich that is. She remembers thinking the same way, too. "Well, these Flames aren't used for showing off, kid! That's your first lesson!"

He ducks his head down and sulks and glares at her, muttering under his breath. It makes her laugh even harder.

* * *

They go down to the beach again, to race each other on the sand and stare at the pink clouds and the gradient sky. Jai knows it's their last time down here. Intuitively, Devin knows it, too.

When a sense of finality starts settling between them, Devin tells her his parents died in a fire. "Some twisted guy set fire to the theater," he reveals. "They call it arson. Lots of people died, not just my mum and dad. It's…It was horrible."

_Coincidences_. Honestly, Jai thinks the universe has a shameful sense of humor.

It's an equivalent exchange, so she tells him about Aiva. Aiva and her friend, Enten. "They didn't go peacefully. They were sick, really sick. It was painful for everyone."

"Couldn't you cure them?" Devin asks. "You have Flames."

Jai shakes her head. "I tried. Lots of people tried. None of us could go deep enough. The lupus in Kay was like…a drop, compared to an ocean." She motions toward the sea. "I used to wonder, you know – maybe if I was better, if I tried harder, if my Flames could have done more – but those are just wishes, you know."

He digs his toes into the sand until he's buried ankle-deep. "I still wish I was there when it happened, in the theater. Like I could've saved them somehow." He peers up at him, strangely vulnerable. She doesn't like it. "Stupid, right?"

"Mm-hmm. _Very_ stupid. You'd have died, and left Kay and Julia alone."

Devin slogs her in the shoulder. Ow. "I'm not an idiot, lady."

"You just sounded like one!"

"Only because you put it that way!"

She laughs and slings her arm around his shoulder. For once, he doesn't pull away. Achievement accomplished. "Hey, hey. When I leave, you should go to school and bring home all the friends you can get. Your house feels too empty sometimes."

He glowers at her. "Just because you like everyone doesn't mean I have to like everyone."

"Why not? People are fun! Life would be boring otherwise!" She grins at him and the glass waves. "Your sister would like the company."

Devin's lips twitch upward as he drags her arm back to her side. "My sister's _one_. She doesn't know how to like _anything_ yet."

Jai pulls him out of the sand. His feet make a funny squelching noise.

"I'll miss you, you know?" she says, not being embarrassed by these sorts of things. "I won't forget you guys. I'll visit and bring presents and make sure Kay remembers me."

"Good, 'cause I hate goodbyes," Devin grouses, _clearly_ embarrassed by these sorts of things. "You have to teach me about Flames, and help us with the gardening. I'll hunt you down and drag you back if you don't."

He smiles, and she beams back at him. They're happy. Bright. Like the sun.

"Sure," she says.

* * *

Since Devin hates goodbyes so dearly, Jai decides to leave while he's at school. Basically spare him the trouble. He'll hate her for it, she knows, but that's part of the fun.

Julia packs her bag for her. She stuffs it with clothes and books – mainly linguistics. "Take it, all of it," the housekeeper orders. "They've been rotting in this house for who knows how long. The clothes were all Gwen's – Devin's mother - but they seem to fit you fine. Those books belonged to my son. No, don't you dare shake your head like that, young lady – you _will _be taking these. I'm glad they're finally being put to use!"

Jai can't help but feel honored. Grateful. Things like this make her way too hopeful for her own good.

They say their goodbyes on the doorstep. She pulls the older woman into a hug and stores the lavender scent of her greying hair into her memory for the rest of time. When they let go, Julia has tears in her eyes. Jai doesn't, but she's close.

At Kay's small cry, Jai turns to the little girl and lifts her up. The baby waves her hands in the air and coos, her pretty blue eyes twinkling. She's happy. Precious.

Jai's intuition tells her right then and there that Kay is a Sky.

Jai feels like her heart is swelling. This, right here, right in front of her, is proof of everything she used to fight for. These are beautiful, wonderful people.

Even though she knows she'll see them again, there's still a lump forming in her throat.

She places a hand on Julia's cheek and kisses her forehead. Lightly. Delicately. Her Sun Flames rise up and warm every breadth of her body, and that warmth spreads across Julia's skin, even as the old woman's Storm Flames murmur and hug the light close, moving and thriving after what's been most likely years of hibernation and stillness.

People used to call this a blessing. A sacred thing. Jai thinks it's just gratitude.

"Oh, sweet girl," Julia whispers as her entire face glows with color. "I hope you find what you're looking for."

Jai hopes so too.

She walks away from the white house and the ocean and Julia and Kay until all four of them are little dots on the horizon, and keeps walking until only the sky lies ahead.

* * *

The Trinisette is there. She can feel it.

It's _waiting._

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** hopefully this isn't one of those lame boring superpower oc fics and instead one of those heck yeah right on oc fics.

by the way, if anyone who reads this fic happens to be afflicted with lupus, i just want to apologize if i offend you or anything (hopefully this isn't the case) because lupus is a really serious sort of thing.

anyway, reviews are great! thanks for reading!


	2. Blue

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** pahpahpah

* * *

2\. BLUE

* * *

So, it's raining.

The sky is bright, sunlight makes the clouds luminous, a sweet scent clings to the street next to a candy store – and for some reason, it's still _raining._

It's one of those spring showers. Jai likes those. They're not dull, or gloomy, or depressing. They're bright. Rejuvenating. The clouds shelter the sky, and the plants and trees catch the falling drops, and the sun gives all of them healing. It's almost a perfect balance.

Jai's fond of spring showers, even though the rain today is pounding the cement streets with much more ferocity than what's necessary. As if Japan's sidewalks have done some sort of personal offense toward the sky.

She wouldn't know, though. She just got to Japan yesterday.

Anyway, the rain was much softer when she went into the candy store five minutes ago. Now, it looks like it wants to drown her – possibly because she didn't end up buying anything. Everything on the shelves looked delicious, but she didn't have nearly enough yen for any of it.

The weather isn't very understanding about that, though. Which isn't fair.

So Jai stands beneath the little roof above the candy store's double sliding doors, watching the rain slip and shine, and wishes she had some sort of jacket.

Most of the people on the street have already taken cover. The ones who haven't yet are the ones with umbrellas, but those umbrellas are bending and twisting from the onslaught of rain. She's surprised her own little square of precious rooftop hasn't broken yet.

So she's left standing there, thinking about these things. And then the boy comes along.

The boy, who's just a kid – not even Devin's age – has tan skin and dark hair. Honey-colored eyes. Strong arms. He's also soaked through the bone, like he just climbed straight out of a nearby river. His shirt sags over his shoulders.

Jai sees him, some kid she's never seen before in her life, and her Flames start to move. Warmth spreads across her chest like a wildfire.

This is exciting. Exhilarating.

Not because her intuition is currently praising her, telling her she's finally found something _right_ after weeks and months of searching – but because the kid's still eight yards away, but she can already sense his Rain Flames. They're some of the purest Flames she's ever had the honor of witnessing.

She likes him on the spot.

The boy jogs up and stands beside her. His jog is kind of lame, like he'd already given up keeping himself dry half an hour ago and had chosen to succumb to the forces of nature. He takes off one of his shoes and pours an entire lake out of it.

"I don't know why you even bother," Jai says.

"Heh, I know." Even his smile is kind of lame. "Actually, I don't know. Why I'm bothering, I mean." He does the same with the other shoe. "It's like I'm walking on a sea."

She splutters a laugh. "What'd you do, fall in one?"

"There were…really large puddles. On the way here. So yeah, basically." His breath comes out in short puffs. "Forecast said it would be sunny. At least the rain's not that cold."

He starts wringing out his hair, only to stop and stare at her. Apologetically. Guiltily. "Ah, I'm so sorry, ma'am – I'm getting you wet, aren't I?"

Jai makes a gesture at the plummeting rain. "Don't apologize - I don't think it even matters, at this point!"

"Do you have an umbrella on you?"

"Ey…nah. Otherwise I'd be using it right now." Her fingers brush through the rain. "Do you think this'll let up soon?"

The kid gives her a lopsided smile. His laugh has a nice tone to it. "Uh...maybe? No idea, but I can't believe this! I have to get to the subway station on the other side of the city!"

Jai coughs. Laughs. Keeps laughing. Oh, no – she'd feel sorry for the boy if she wasn't already feeling sorry for herself. "I have to get there too," she gasps as the rhythm of the droplets increases in tempo, and the sun lifts off the clouds to shine directly upon the splashes.

He stares at her, his lips twitching upward. "Really?"

She wipes the moisture out of her eyes. These coincidences are just becoming more and more ridiculous. "Ooh, yeah – this'll be fun, won't it? Running all the way to the other side of the city, trying not to drown in the meanwhile – "

The boy collapses, trying to contain his own mirth. He fails. Laughter's contagious, and something about this whole situation makes everything hilarious. "Do…Do you think we can take a taxi?" he asks breathlessly.

"Not with my luck! And if your luck is any better than mine, you're _still_ not going to get a taxi when everyone else's trying to escape the rain along with us."

He groans, but his eyes are still smiling. Maybe he's blinded from the sunlight. "Ah…that's it. I…give up."

Right in front of her stands a Rain, trying to give up to…the rain. That doesn't seem right. And even if he weren't a Rain, she still wouldn't let this slide. Giving up is never an option.

Jai decides to give him some encouragement. She leans down and slings an arm over his shoulder, like how she did with Devin ages ago. "I say we run for it! That train's not going to come to us on its own, is it?"

Helplessly, the boy gestures toward the sky in response. It's pouring buckets.

So he makes a good point, but never-mind that. "You can't be more soaked than you are now," she points out. "We don't have jackets, or umbrellas. You're going to catch a cold if you just stay out here and wait for the rain to stop, anyway. And sure, you could always spend some time at the candy store behind us, you might be thinking – but that place sells chocolate for kings! You'd go bankrupt buying from that place alone!"

That startles a laugh out of the kid. "So there's really not much of a choice, is there?" he asks semi-reluctantly.

She grins. "Let's run, all the way there! It can't be harder than swimming!"

He smiles up at her. His Flames expand in his eyes like twin stars. Glorious. Magnificent.

"I'm Yamamoto Takeshi," he says. "What's your name, ma'am?"

"Just Jai is fine! Not Jai-san or Jai-chan or whatever you Japanese like to tack onto people's names. I'm a foreigner at heart." She beckons him. The street glistens with diamonds and water caught in the sunlight. "Come on, let's run! You have to guide me if I take a wrong turn!"

Her friends used to say she acted like a child. Which is perfectly acceptable, in her modest opinion.

Yamamoto Takeshi splutters a laugh and toes the edges of their dry space. His face is full of surprise. Surprise and delight and lightness. "My shoes are going to be _ruined_ by the end of this…"

He takes off. She follows him.

They sprint through the streets, water flying from their clothes in rivulets. Raindrops fly from her hair, showering the world in jewels.

It's amazing and exhilarating, and the sun makes a shimmery imprint in the middle of the crossroads, and the umbrella people smile and shout as they rush past, and the boy's shoes kick up water in her face – not that it matters, because the water has already seeped into their skin, and now they're glowing like fire as they run.

Their Flames move together. His Rain sings a song, like a thousand notes pieced together into a dream, matched with the beat of the rain. Her Sun pushes them forward until their bodies feel lighter than the inverse of air.

Yamamoto trips and stumbles. His cheeks are red, air heaving in and out of him in gasps, but that's not important. What's important is his grin, the one splitting his face in two. "Jai, 'm tired – "

She snags him by his sleeve and keeps running, although her pace slows. "Hey, keep going!" she shouts as the rain beats into their hair and eyes and mouths. "I'll race you to the end!"

Yamamoto looks up, the Flames blazing in response. It's a competition. He likes competition.

She doesn't mind it, either.

His legs are shorter. Her strides are slower. It works like that – as a balance. Jai runs and runs and dares to sprint harder, despite how short her breath is, as Yamamoto pulls up next to her and they blur past the world like hummingbirds.

Ten more yards until they pass the sign. Five more. One more. She tries to pull ahead –

And fails, because he crosses the boundary first.

She skids to a halt and ends up falling over when her boots fail to keep traction. Yamamoto doesn't do any better. He stumbles over to the nearest column and leans his entire being against it.

Around them, people stare at them like they've sprouted three heads. She notices, vaguely, in the blurred edges of her mind, that the train hasn't arrived yet.

"You," the boy gasps as his chest rises and falls like the tide, "are _crazy_."

It takes a moment for her to realize she's started laughing. It's getting harder to breathe. She doesn't care.

Yamamoto shakes his head. Each breath comes out as a gasp. "I can't…believe you. M'…lungs…'re bursting."

She throws a fist into the air. "_Yeah_…that was great!" Her limbs will be sore later. She can feel it already. "Not…dead! We…made it!"

They're both sprawled there, grinning like idiots, when the sound of the train rumbles in the distance. Jai puffs out a breath as the boy staggers over and gives her his hand. "C'mon," he says as he pulls her up. "Gotta get…get the train. Can't…miss it now."

Somehow, he drags her into one of the train cars, and down into an empty seat. Some of the passengers give them raised eyebrows.

That makes sense. After all, they're dripping all over the place.

She tries to take deep breaths, long and slow. It hurts at first. Gets better eventually. Her heart rate is still all over the place.

As the train moves, the car descends into a quiet mumble of conversation. "Dad's gonna kill me," Yamamoto huffs out beside her. "No, he'll look at me…think I came back from the dead. Feels like I'm made of water."

"You are," she agrees. "Your shoes probably…probably hold most of the world's water by now."

He snickers and clutches his sides. "It's what I get for running in that rain. Then again, this was…_your_ idea. I'm going to…going to regret this tomorrow. Gonna ache all over."

"I don't plan on getting up at all, so 's worth it to me!" She ruffles his hair and pulls back with a hand full of rain droplets. "You're really fast, you know that? It's amazing!"

He shrugs. Modest kind of guy. "I play baseball. Used to run a lot in elementary school. Still do, sometimes, since I'm good – better – at it."

"How old are you? I'm thinking…fourteen, somewhere around there."

"Thirteen. Middle school." Yamamoto grins and gazes into the distance. Looks like good memories are hidden in there somewhere. "What about you?"

She never felt comfortable with answering that question – mainly because she didn't have much of an answer. "Take a guess."

"Um…eighteen? Early twenties? I have no idea."

"Eh, close enough!" Jai pats his shoulder. "Yamamoto Takeshi. Weird name, isn't it? At least it's easy to memorize!"

His laugh comes out sheepish. "Lots of people say it's generic. My dad's kind of well-known around here, though. His name's Yamamoto Tsuyoshi – he runs a sushi bar on the eastern side of town." His gaze sidles over to her. "Have you heard of it?"

She twists her mouth against her cheek in a _sorry-dunno_ sort of look. "Nah, I just got to Japan yesterday! The most I've done so far is land an apartment room. I'll drop by sometime, though. It's good food, right?"

"Yeah, the best in Namimori." The boy smiles with pride. "So…you're new here, Jai? Where're you from?"

"Oh, tons of places – you wouldn't believe it! But the last place I've been to is Italy."

"You like travelling?"

"Yeah, love it! Some countries feel like a big dream, when you visit – full of surprises, you know? But I think…" She closes her eyes, reveling in the presence of the Rain spirit only a few inches away from her. It's surreal. Incredible. "I think I'm going to stay here for a long time, though. This place's turned out interesting."

"So technically, you just moved in."

"Technically!" Jai leans back and stretches, watching the world whizz by through the train windows. "Gotta get a job, figure out what I'm gonna do… Hey, I haven't gone job-hunting in ages!" She gives him a quick glance as a thought strikes her. A smart thought. "Hey, you know these parts pretty well, right? Do you know any places with open offers?"

He brightens a little. "I do, yeah! My dad could probably point out a few places, too! What kind of job are you looking for?"

"Anything, really. Preferably nothing to do with technology, though. I've worked as a waitress, a clerk, a musician in a couple of streets and restaurants – "

"A musician? What do you play?"

"The guitar, lute, mandolin, biwa… I sold them a while back, and I've never owned all four of them at the same time." She shakes her head and sighs. "It's such a shame, really. I can play a lot more instruments, mostly string, but the ones I owned in particular were great!"

The train begins to slow, pulling to a halt in front of another station. People rise from their seats. The doors slide open, and the chimes of the speakers are lost amidst the hum of shuffling feet.

Yamamoto does the same, but slowly. Like he's tired. Then, he looks her in the eye, and she realizes he doesn't actually want to leave yet.

Huh. That's nice.

"I think," he says carefully and kind of hopefully, "you should drop by at my dad's sometime. He's been complaining about the lack of customers for a while now. We were thinking of some ways to draw people in, but now I've met you and you can play an instrument. So – "

"You want me to work there? At your place?" Funny, how pieces tend to fall into place, just like this. "I'll drop by, yeah! Where's it at?"

He glances over his shoulder as the last few people file out the doors. His words come out rushed. "It's called Takesushi – near Namimori Middle, the shopping district. You can come in the morning when we're still closed. I'll be at school, but if you tell my dad I recommended you – "

"I might have a chance, right?" She grins and props her head up on her hands. "Thanks, Yamamoto!"

With a final wave, he slips through the train doors a second before they close. A few mechanical beeps, a hissing sound, and the car rumbles as the engines kick up again. She tilts her head back and grins at the boy, standing there, dripping wet.

He keeps waving until the station is nothing more than a spot in the distance.

It feels cold without his presence. Which is ridiculous, but there's no denying the sensation. It was like sitting next to a soul, a sentient mass of water-fire. It was _timelessness_.

His Flames are the most beautiful thing she's seen since waking up - and after months of mindless, hysterical wandering all throughout Europe without finding any of the answers she needs, isn't that saying something?

Jai closes her eyelids. The next hour passes beneath them.

* * *

As it turns out, Takesushi is a very small shop. The first thing she notices is the variety of katanas hanging along the east wall, and the second thing she notices is how comfy the place feels (like Julia's house, but compacted).

Everything is modest. Humble. Traditional.

Yamamoto's father – the older Yamamoto, she might as well say – is all three of those as well, but there's a certain prideful quality in him – the kind of pride you see in older people, confident people, people who are absolutely certain of their place in the present. It's a rare thing to have. She can admire that.

It's early morning, just after seven, when she steps in and asks for the job. The man stares at her for a long while, a strong set of brows covering his eyes. "My son sent you, did he?"

"He did," she agrees.

He waves her over to a seat at the bar, and goes around behind the counter, where a chef would stand. "Did you bring a resume, miss?"

"Oh, my name's Jai. No surname. And no, I don't have one."

"…Jai-san, then. Well…I trust my son's judgment, of course, but I'll still need to see if you qualify for the job. I suppose, if you don't want to do this another time when you _do_ have a resume, you can consider this your interview." His eyes are keen. Calculating. Not the pair of eyes she expected to find on a modest, humble, traditional man running a sushi bar. "If that's alright with you?"

He thinks she's suspicious.

She can already tell this is going to go splendidly.

Some twenty minutes later, the older Yamamoto is frowning at Jai like she's the coming of this world's end. After hearing about her ambiguous, nonexistent past, she supposes that's the natural reaction.

"You don't have any credentials whatsoever," he says. "I can presume, then, that you've entered Japan illegally, if your statements so far are valid."

"Hmm. Yeah."

He folds his arms. Strokes his chin. "Why would you tell me this?"

She finds that the best results only appear from honesty. Nothing more, nothing less. "Even if you did call the police, or security, or anything like that, I'd be gone before they could come. I'm good at keeping hidden. Besides, I haven't done much else that's law-breaking besides hopping borders."

The older Yamamoto doesn't even blink an eye. He's no ordinary fellow. "Should I also assume that your 'previous work experience' is a lie?"

"No, no." Jai nurses the cup of tea that was set in front of her at some point. "I did do some waitressing and some restaurant music in Europe. It wasn't for very long each time, but I'd been travelling – "

"How were you hired, then, if you had no papers to prove yourself?"

"Well, I – _found people_." She sips her tea, and it's not bad. "People who don't care about what passports could do, or how easily a person fits into the systems. People who live each day as their last and surround themselves with the extraordinary, who hired all sorts of people – not just me – regardless of their pasts and their futures, just to see the life they could bring." Her face splits into a smile. "Essentially, people who remember how to trust. Brazen idiots, the whole lot of them. I've met some wonderful characters, you see."

The older Yamamoto taps his fingers along his arm. Opens his mouth. Closes it again. "There's something about you," he says slowly, probably sensing her Flames in some deep dark corner of his sub-consciousness, "and I don't know what to think of you yet, Jai-san, but Takesushi opens in fifteen minutes for lunch."

She doesn't get it.

Then, the man goes up the back stairs and comes down with a shamisen. A real, wooden shamisen with three strings and a long, elegant neck, white-faced and probably carved out of cedar – which is unusual, but she likes it. He hands it to her.

She gets it now.

At his appraising look, Jai feels the need to take it like it's something precious. A musical jewel, that's what this is. "This thing has a soul," she says, idly brushing her hands against the worn marks. "Did you play it, once?"

His gaze bores into her. "My wife did, actually."

She can tell by the way he says it that his wife is dead.

"She must have loved it," Jai says without thinking. It's too late to take it back now, though, because now the man's gaze has intensified a hundred-fold, so she just adds, "You can tell, right? Just by looking at it. This thing can't be less than twenty years old and it's still in great shape!"

A small smile crosses his face. "I've kept it in working condition. You mentioned you could play this sort of instrument?"

She laughs as she brushes some of the dust off the strings. "Are you challenging me, Yamamoto-san? I've…what, only fifteen minutes to prepare?"

"Did you think I wouldn't test your playing skill?" he shoots back.

Aha. Good point.

Jai sits down with her back against the east wall, perched on a stool, and runs through the different tones of the shamisen. Some of it is almost-kind-of-sort-of familiar, mainly because Hatz used to own an instrument like this – three strings, as long as he was tall – and played it whenever Aiva got upset. He loved it. Could never get his hands off the thing. Probably would've _married_ it if he had the chance.

Now she's sitting here, trying to figure out how to imitate _Hatz_ of all people. This is insane.

It would be nice, she thinks with some sort of vague sadness and happiness combined, if he could be here.

As her practice session draws to a close and the older Yamamoto flips the 'closed' sign to 'open', Jai goes through a quick series of scales. Her grip on the bachi isn't entirely accurate, but at least it works. And maybe her fingers don't move as fluidly as they could along the three strings, but at least she knows how to hit the right notes.

Ten minutes later, the first customers walk in. Then, the next few, and then the next. It's a small place. People don't seek it out as much. Most of them are probably regulars.

Jai plays by improvisation. Japanese court music is easy to fake. Faking music isn't dignified in the slightest, but still easy. She listens to the twanging notes and laughs to herself.

A couple seat themselves a ways away from her and give her curious glances. "Hi!" she calls, having done this before, and strikes up a conversation. On the spot. Just like that. She doesn't want them to just smile and wave back civilly and be done with it – how boring would that be?

She likes people. Most of them end up liking her, too.

Jai loves music, and she loves _talking_ with people, even though she doesn't understand all the references they make and some of the events they explain. Her fingers dance over the strings and twirl around the bachi as the couple starts to laugh, and the other people strike up conversations with her about her new job and this place and this city. The random plucking of melodies floats nicely in the air.

One of the men seated at the bar cracks a joke – a good one, a pun on words that makes his wife groan exasperatingly at his side – and she dissolves into laughter, music hovering all around them.

She can feel the older Yamamoto watching her out of the corner of his eye as she switches to a lighter melody, not completely Japanese-sounding but still passable. In turn, she watches as his store fills with more and more people as the music slips through the front door and out into the street, luring them all in.

This is where she wants to belong, in a crowded place full of movement. Sound. Delight.

The family seated right next to her ask her about Europe. A mother, father, and two children. The kids make cooing noises over all the places she's been, all the things she's seen. "You've been to Italy!" shouts the girl. "I've never been there before!"

Jai laughs – she never gets tired of laughing. "Oh, I only stayed there for a few days, so I didn't see very much at all."

"Did you see Venice?" asks the man next to them. He hasn't spoken a word until now, and the lingering shadows under his eyes warned her not to start up a conversation with him until he decided to start one himself. He seems like a nice guy. Tired, but chill.

"Nah, only a few parts of Bari. Have you?" she asks.

"Yes, I've been there." A smile flickers across his face as he tips his glass forward. "It's nice. You should visit one day."

"Gotcha." Jai gives him a thumbs up. She gets rewarded with a small laugh, the kind of laugh people only release after the weariness in them unwinds a little. It makes her feel proud. Accomplished.

The little boy taps her arm suddenly. "Do you know – Do you know any songs from Italy?"

How unexpected. "Yeah, I do."

"Can you play one? I wanna hear it! Like, an Italian song!"

"You don't have to, dear," adds the mother as she keeps a watchful eye on her son. "That is, if you don't feel like taking any requests of that sort – "

She laughs. "It's fine, it's fine! Okay, let me think of something to play. I only know really old songs, by the way. No newer ones. Hey!" Her voice rises to fill all corners of the room. "Does anyone mind European songs? To shake up the mood, or whatever?"

A chorus of 'no's. Shaking heads. "Go for it!" someone calls, followed by feminine laughter.

Her fingers run over the shamisen strings. As foreign as the bari feels, wrapped up in her hand and carrying vibrations through her wrist, it's not like she can't adapt. Yeah. This is fine. She can do this.

She decides to play one of Dineva's compositions. Her voice isn't that great - in fact, it could be a lot better - but the song just isn't complete without the words, so after a couple of plucked chords, she opens her mouth and sings.

Even though probably nobody in this restaurant can understand them, the lyrics – Jai thinks - are lovely. In this song, Dineva sang about having dreams. Living long. Being strong enough to survive anything.

It's incredibly ironic.

* * *

In the end, she gets the job.

Above minimum wage. Lunch and dinner hours. A giant discount for her own meals, if she eats there. Extra pay if she does waitressing instead of music on busier days. Optional days off every Sunday.

It's not bad. Not bad at all. Especially when Yamamoto comes home with a backpack hefted over one shoulder, looks up, and grins at the sight of her seated at the edge of the bar, drinking some nice, plain water. She likes that look on his face, that kind of joyful surprise. "You got the job!"

"I got the job!" She reaches over and high-fives him as he runs up to her. "Crazy, right?"

"Yeah, you're _definitely_ crazy." He ducks her shoulder-punching movement and spins around. "Oh – hey, Dad!"

The older Yamamoto walks down the stairs and smiles at them. Each step makes the boards creak beneath him. "You're back late, Takeshi."

The boy laughs sheepishly. "_Maa_, sorry, Tsuna needed extra help on his homework, and we got caught up with one of Lambo's games. Did you really hire Jai, or is she just faking it?"

"Hey!" she splutters.

His dad just shakes his head. "Well, she works here, now. You two seem very familiar with each other. How did you meet?"

They exchange looks. Amused ones. "We got stuck in the rain," Yamamoto says.

"Made a run for it."

"Raced all the way to the station – "

"On the other side of the city. We collapsed on the train, talked a little, and I mentioned I needed someplace to work – "

"So I recommended us!" The kid shrugs his free shoulder. "It looks like everything turned out fine. Hold on – I'm going to put my backpack down real quick. This thing weighs more than a house."

He staggers up the stairs. Jai watches him go with her lips twisting upward. Everything's going to be fine.

When she looks back at the older Yamamoto, she finds herself on the receiving end of a stern smile and two strong, stony eyes. It's like a new person is standing in front of her. These eyes are filled with determination, reflecting a heart of Rain. They're wonderful eyes.

It's a warning for her, basically. _If you hurt him, if you hurt us, if you lie to us -_

Jai places a hand on her heart. Lazily. Nonchalantly. Like it doesn't mean anything, but she hopes her eyes tell him what this gesture's supposed to mean. It stands for a promise.

_Never, _she thinks.

And the man leans back and scoffs, very visibly satisfied.

* * *

Jai goes for lots of walks. It keeps her fit. Active. Thoughtful.

Mostly, she just follows where her intuition leads, same as she's been doing for the past half a year. Her intuition is what took her to Belgium, and then France, and then to all sorts of alleys and black corners and whispers of the underground while she was travelling in Europe.

She doesn't like her intuition. It's fickle. Manipulating. She would've stayed in Italy for at least a month - the concentration of Flames in that place is higher than any other place in the _world_, and she would've loved to discover _why_ – if her senses hadn't gone haywire, and that knotted feeling in her stomach hadn't multiplied tenfold, and her intuition hadn't told her to go to Japan _right now right this minute or else you're going to miss out on something you'll really want to see._

Her intuition drags her to all sorts of unfamiliar places. But Jai plays along with it anyway, since she has literally no other way to navigate. She goes exploring. Past the city. Down the neighborhoods.

Into the shops, across the bridge, and almost head-first into a warehouse teeming with yakuza. Damn.

"Get lost," says the man standing outside as he approaches, fingering some kind of gun in his pocket. Apparently, the yakuza are a big thing around here.

She turns back in the blink of an eye. "Sure, sure! Sorry!"

Jai heads back to the heart of the city, and then back to the neighborhoods. There's something about this place that makes her throat dry. Drier than a desert. She has no idea what it is, but a part of her knows she'll find the reason for it eventually.

That's how the world works. Strange happenings and irony and coincidences. Jai always expects all three of those things in her life.

She's never disappointed.

It's Sunday, her day off, so she walks along the sidewalk around noon – and as the trees shimmer with rich greens and the pavement flares white-hot where the dappling shadows don't reach, an infant comes striding around the corner.

His hair and eyes are black, blacker than the crow perched on the telephone lines above them. He wears a suit. A fedora, with an orange stripe. A green chameleon on the brim.

There is a pacifier dangling around his neck, and it's filled with Sun Flames.

She takes a deep breath and holds it.

Her intuition goes off in a frenzied clamor in the back of her mind. Look at that, it shrieks. That _thing_. What _is_ that? That little orb around that boy's neck, trapping the oldest and most powerful Sun Flames she's ever seen -

_What is that?_

At this point, Jai has no clue. She has no idea what that could be, but it's another hint – another key point in this journey, and she really loves finding key points.

She keeps walking, and doesn't falter. So does the baby, until they're no more than a meter away from each other. Suddenly, he stops. Maybe it's his intuition acting up, too.

His eyes drill holes into her own.

Jai forces herself not to look at the pacifier. "Hi," she says, since greetings are always a good start. "Whose kid are you?"

He's not a kid. She knows that already, even as she asks the question. There's something about him, his Flames, his pacifier, that burning feeling surrounding him like a cloud – it screams _man_ and not _child_.

"I'm reborn," says the infant.

She doesn't get it. That doesn't make any sense. Unless that's meant to be some sort of explanation for his appearance. "What, you died and got born again?"

"No, my name is Reborn."

"Oh! That's it!" Jai laughs, feeling the sun itch away against her back. She's relaxing, little by little. That's what she's supposed to do, anyway - take things in stride. "Sorry, sorry! I just – what kind of name is Reborn?"

Reborn's left eyebrow lifts. The other one doesn't even twitch. That takes skill. "Don't make fun of me. Who are you?"

"I'm Jai."

His deepening scrutiny never wavers. "Where are you going?"

"Just forward," she says, feeling kind of silly, "and a little further after that. Where are you going, Reborn?"

"Forward," he replies, "in the opposite direction."

She laughs. Her throat twists. Above them, the crow takes off in a flurry. "Where's that gonna take you?"

He pauses. "A house. There's someone I want to meet up with." His eyes are twin black holes under the shadow of his hat. That doesn't bother her, though. "And you?"

"Oh, I don't know. Somewhere nice, I hope."

"Like where?"

"A threshold," Jai says. It sounds almost philosophical.

Jai reaches out to him, to his pacifier, to his eyes. Her hand never makes it there. She lets it fall to her side halfway, and laughs, even though she's heartbroken for no reason at all. "That _would_ be nice, wouldn't it?" she adds.

Reborn blinks, staring at the spot where her hand used to be, and back at her again. His small fingers reach up to hover over the pacifier, and then rise higher to tug his fedora over his eyes.

"Who are you?" he asks again, his voice scratchier. More demanding.

"I'm Jai." She turns forward again. "I'm going now, alright? I have a walk to finish."

The Sun opens his mouth to say something, but stops. Maybe it's his intuition calling. Maybe he's just realized how peculiar this conversation is, too strange to be normal between some small baby boy and some ordinary woman.

"See you later, Reborn," Jai says as she walks past. Not _goodbye_. There's no point in saying goodbye.

She thinks they'll be meeting again one day.

Judging from the way his gaze hooks into the backs of her shoulders, he must think so, too.

* * *

'One day' is actually further away than Jai expected. She spends a few weeks working, and exploring, and lounging at Takesushi's bar during free hours when she's got nothing better to do. Tsuyoshi only kicks her out sometimes.

Jai is inquisitive. She likes learning things. She treasures the memories of the people who share their thoughts, their pasts, with her, because it makes her feel honored. Honor is a powerful thing to give.

Sometimes, some people aren't willing. That's fine, too. Jai rarely gives honor herself, since most of her secrets are too heavy.

Sometimes, these things need to be buried away, where nobody can ever hear of them.

Takeshi (and she can call him that now, after so many days of talking and laughing with him) doesn't pass out his secrets. Neither does his father. So the story of Takeshi's mother and Tsuyoshi's wife is never spoken. It rests quietly, as it maybe-possibly should.

Jai can't help but wonder, though, every time she picks up the shamisen.

One day, Tsuyoshi tries to fix the stairs. It's hard work. She helps, too, but after an hour or so of hammering away and tearing apart the floorboards, it becomes clear that they need a third person – someone smaller – to reach into the crevice against the wall and take out the tinier screws.

"My son forgot his phone again," Tsuyoshi grumbles as he takes a water break. "He's working at his friend's house. Do you want to go over there and tell him to come home as soon as possible, Jai?"

Jai agrees, mainly because she's been catching her breath for half the time he's been working, still not being used to physical exertion. "Why not?" she puffs.

He tosses her the address on a note. "It's Sawada Tsunayoshi's house. One of Takeshi's close friends – but he's probably mentioned him to you already. Also, could you pick up some tteokguk along the way?"

"Ha! No way! You know that stuff goes straight to your stomach!"

_"Jai."_

"Fine, fine!"

She leaves, dusty and sweaty and still cackling at the look on her employer's face. That man is great fun.

The route to Sawada's house is almost parallel to the route she used to walk on whenever she felt like going on a stroll. In fact, it would be exactly the same if she wasn't going in the opposite direction.

Today, it is cloudy. A white and grey sky.

Sawada's house is fairly big. All the houses in this neighborhood are big, but his is even larger in comparison. His family must be rich. At least better off compared to other people. She really doesn't know much about this one, besides the little things Takeshi told her – that he's great and kind and has really ridiculous hair, and can be shy sometimes but is still an awesome guy overall.

Jai takes two big steps up the front porch, raps on the dark brown door, and waits.

Her Flames are disquieted. There's something remarkable about this house that she can't quite place. Like there's something massive lurking behind this door.

After a few seconds, it opens. A brown-haired woman smiles brightly up at her. The difference in height between them can't be _less_ than eight inches. "Hello!" she chirps. "How may I help you?"

Jai grins and nods. "Is this the Sawada house? I'm here for Yamamoto Takeshi."

"Oh, yes, he's here! Come on in!" The women beckons her inside. "He's doing homework with his friends right now. I'll take you to the living room." An airy giggle.

Jai's feet cross over the boundaries of the doorframe. For the first time in possibly weeks, she stumbles.

This house is _filled_. To the _brim_. With _spirits._

It's like being in the presence of a star. Close enough to feel the heat, and the light – and who knew it was possible for Flames like these to exist in the same place at the same time? It's incredible. Impossible.

The air crackles with power, with Flames that might even be purer than her own. Purer than her friends. Purest.

She blinks once. Twice. Looks closely at the woman, who is probably Sawada's mother. She reaches inward and lets her Sun Flames coil around the life force of the person in front of her.

It turns out that this woman is one of the largest Sky's she's ever seen. Her son must be the same. No wonder this place feels the way it does – because it's the Sky's domain, and the home of a Sky is always made to feel important. That's just how it is.

Jai doesn't exactly feel small, but she does feel humbled. Maybe awed. This really is unbelievable.

The woman leads her to a closed door that reverberates with shouts and loud noises. "Could you tell them I'll have a snack ready in fifteen minutes, miss…?"

"Jai," she fills in. "And sure."

The noises grow louder. Jai takes the doorknob. Turns it.

And walks into a potential murder scene. Some silver-haired boy is trying to kill a small cow via strangling methods. Meanwhile, Takeshi is sprawled on the ground next to another kid – a radiating Sun, that is – while the petite, brown-haired one pinwheels his arms, seemingly trying to get the silver boy to _stop_ killing the small cow.

A familiar infant sits on the nearby table, drinking out of a mug. _Reborn._

What a shocker.

All movements screech to a halt as soon as she walks in. Takeshi looks up and beams. "Jai!"

"Hey, Taketake!" Jai sits gracelessly beside him and pats him on the shoulder, deciding to briefly ignore everyone else. She grins at the baby on the table. "Fancy meeting you here, by the way!"

Reborn puts his mug down and nods. The motion is half-cordial, half-acknowledging. "Jai."

"Wait, wait, wait, wait – " The silvery boy flings the small cow away. Jai watches with mild horror as the horned little thing hits the wall, bounces, and starts wailing on the floor. The spiky-haired brunet winces in the background.

"That," she says, "wasn't nice."

He just bares his teeth at her. Silly boy, probably still riled up by that cow. "Who are you?! What do you think you're doing, coming in here all of a sudden – and how do you know Reborn-san and the baseball idiot?"

Jai laughs off his anger. "Oh, I actually work at Takesushi! And I met Reborn on one of my walks once. A guy like him is easy enough to remember." She cuffs Takeshi on the head. "By the way, your dad wants you home as soon as possible. We need help fixing the stairs."

His face twists into a cross between a grimace and a grin. "I thought Dad was going to call someone, not do it himself!"

"And spend all that yen? Nah, we thought it would be fine if it was just the two of us. Then your dad almost broke his head in trying to reach the screws next to the wall, and we figured, hey, let's just have you crawl in there and do the hard work! How 'bout it?"

Takeshi groans and scrubs a hand through his hair. "Alright, alright – when do I have to get home?"

"As soon as possible, he said. I'm guessing that means as soon as your work here is done? Also, he wants you to pick up tteokguk at the store."

The boy splutters with laughter. "Wh – no, he doesn't! He always asks you to do that!"

She gives him her best malicious leer. "Times change, Taketake. I'm still dragging you with me. We can suffer the thirty-minute walk there and back together."

"Hey, no way!" His eyes dance with good humor. "And would you quit calling me that?"

"Um," the brunet says quietly in the background.

Jai looks up, notices the multiple pairs of eyes glued to herself, and smiles. She drags herself to her feet and extends a hand to the small Sky. "Sorry, forgot to introduce myself. Just Jai is fine!"

He shakes it like it's a grenade about to go off. "I-I'm Tsuna. Just Tsuna."

"This is Japan, Jai," Takeshi reminds her from behind. "No handshakes. You bow instead."

She makes a weird face at him. "You know, I never got that. What if you lean forward too much and you end up hitting heads? What happens then?"

The Sun boy with bandages around his hands makes a noise of startling realization. "Wow! That's an EXTREMELY interesting point!"

"I like you," Jai tells him immediately.

"I'm Sasagawa Ryohei! It's EXTREMELY nice to meet you, Jai-san!"

She leans over and shakes hands with him, too. "I'm telling you, just Jai is fine. I always thought honorifics were strange."

The silver-haired one makes a scoffing sound. It's not mocking, though. "You're obviously a foreigner, then." He takes her offered hand, and his grip is firm. Rough. Not so subtle.

"So are you," she points out. "There's Italian blood in you." His flabbergasted expression makes her laugh. "It's quite obvious, you know! Your eyes and cheekbones prove it."

He scowls and shoves his hands into his pockets as soon as she releases him. "Gokudera Hayato," he growls. "Mind your own business, by the way."

"Gotcha." She pats his arm.

Takeshi snickers, ignoring the way Gokudera bristles at her touch. "We're just about finished with our homework," he says, scanning the papers scattered across the floor, "so I think I'll be done in fifteen minutes. Is it alright if Jai waits around, Tsuna?"

"A-Ah, sure, that's fine…"

The brunet rubs the back of his head, sweating bullets. Jai gives him a puzzled smile. This kid doesn't seem to like her. Or maybe it's just him. She can't actually tell.

Reborn smirks. "Calm down, Dame-Tsuna. I didn't call her here. We met by chance."

She doesn't understand.

Immediately, the boy brightens. "Really? So…So she's just an ordinary citizen! A perfectly normal person!" He looks like he might cry. Not out of sorrow, no. Tears of elation.

She still doesn't understand, but now, some suspicions have sneaked their way in.

Jai looks at him. Looks at Reborn. Looks at the sheer relief etched into Tsuna's face, at the hilarious gathering of friends at his side. Looks at the pulsing tetrad of Flames – Sky, Storm, Rain, and Sun – contained in a room too small for their enormity.

There's just no way coincidences could go this far. These people had to have found each other somehow. Probably through some interesting connections.

Probably through the mafia.

And if that's true, if the mafia isn't limited to kids and if these people – including Takeshi – are aware of how powerful their Flames burn within themselves, there's no reason for Jai to withhold her secret.

So Jai lifts one hand idly and lets Sun Flames gather in the palm of it, soft and golden and glowing and perfectly controlled. "Nah," she says. "I'm not."

Tsuna shrieks.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** whew okay this chapter is also suspiciously long even though i didn't mean for it to be…ehhghh whatever

any reviews and favorites and follows are appreciated!


	3. Scarlet

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** whew-eee. took longer than expected. also the shortest chapter so far.

* * *

3\. SCARLET

* * *

Takeshi's way of thinking is incredible.

"It's a game, you see," he explains as they stroll across the street, tiny dots in the midst of civilization. "A mafia game. Tsuna and the others play it all the time."

She ducks her head to avoid the fork-like branches of the trees. The leaves whisper rumors as they pass by. "Do they?"

"Yeah. Tsuna is the mafia boss. Hayato's the right-hand man. I think I'm his left-hand, although Reborn calls me one of Tsuna's Guardians. Reborn's the one who started this, you know. He calls himself the best hitman in the world." The Rain smiles at her, but this time, it's different. There's something beneath there, lurking. Something he wants her to know.

Jai doesn't get it. Takeshi's lies are obvious. The mafia isn't a game – she knows that. She's seen what the famiglie in Europe are capable of. He can't possibly be so blind.

Yeah, Jai doesn't get it at all.

"I get it," she tells him anyway, since she trusts him just that much.

Takeshi's laughter accompanies them along the sidewalk. It sounds kind of relieved, but maybe that's just her dreaming. "So what was that fire thing you did before?" he asks. "Tsuna can do something like that. There's this flame that shows up on his forehead sometimes whenever the kid pretends to shoot him."

She just laughs and gives him an exaggerated shrug. "It's called the Sun Flame! It's my special power! Your friend has something similar."

The boy turns starry-eyed. "That's really cool!"

Once again, she reaches out to the massive presence of this magnificent ocean inside of him, this grand sea of Flames he has yet to discover. "You think so?"

"Yeah! That must mean you're playing the mafia game too, right?"

"No, no!" Jai snatches a large leaf off the bushes tickling her arm. She apologizes to the bush in her head and pins the leaf to Takeshi's hair like a tag. "I'm not part of the game. I mean, Flames – they're not part of the mafia. They're separate."

Takeshi frowns, even as he bats her away. He looks surprised. "Really?"

"Really!" She's tempted to laugh at the bobbing green slip attached to his head, but her words are actually quite important. At least, he needs to believe that they're important. That means it's time to be serious. "Flames aren't part of a game, you know. They're bigger than that. This is real."

A glint enters Takeshi's eye. It's a shard of hard flint, of solemnness and silence. He says nothing.

One day, he'll discover that depthless lake of Rain Flames hiding inside of him. It'll burst from him in a magnificent song and take the world by storm. It'll fall from the stars and the sky and drown them in blue (it'll drown her).

"Life is fire," she says.

Takeshi doesn't get it. He shouldn't get it.

"Oh," he replies, because –

Because he might trust her just that much, as well.

* * *

Jai's heard stories about the greatest hitman before. She's listened to whispers in the back alleys of France. There are legends spun up in the underground tunnels running beneath the north of Belgium about a mafioso in a black suit and a hat, leaving chaos in his wake.

She had no idea they were talking about Reborn.

Naturally, as the greatest hitman in the world, Reborn is suspicious of her. His eyes are black holes with nothing inside them. Still, he tells her about the Vongola Famiglia and Sawada Tsunayoshi's role as the next don, because those answers are the very least he can offer.

"Yamamoto is Tsuna's Rain Guardian," Reborn tells her, since Jai considers Takeshi her friend and she deserves to know that much. It comes as no surprise, though. That little revelation.

Jai sits down on the dull, boring, beige steps of the Sawada house's front porch, half-listening to the chaotic shouts and screams coming from inside. She doesn't even want to know what they're doing. "He thinks it's a game. I don't understand. It's all real, isn't it?"

The infant tips his hat up with his stubby fingers. "It is." He doesn't explain further.

Guardians are funny things. The whole concept is.

Jai was a Guardian, once.

Her leader never needed protecting, though. It was always the other way around. Skies are so, so very protective of what's theirs. Even after she stepped down, she never left that circle of protection. Not ever.

(Some memories are dangerous to relive, so she pushes them down again as they swell. She shoves her hands into the sea and pushes it away from her feet.)

Anyway, Guardians weren't always exclusive to the mafia. Somewhere along the line, something must have changed to make it like that. Something went awry.

It's her turn to explain herself, so she tells him she isn't a part of the underground. She doesn't lie about it. "I've heard of the Vongola in passing when I was in Europe, but I've never been a part of the mafia. Not ever."

"Then how did you learn about Dying Will Flames?"

Jai barks a laugh. "Is that what you call it? _Dying Will_ Flames?"

It makes sense. Kind of. Flames push and pull, like ocean waves – like the ebbing and flowing of the tide that lapped at Devin's feet as they walked along the shore, that Faux and Enten tip-toed on as the rest of them collected shells and talked about plain, mundane things.

Drawing Flames out of yourself takes resolve. Resolve and determination and motivation, amongst other things. _Dying Will_ sounds weird, but it fits right. It does.

She ignites the back of her hand with a soft, golden glow. Reborn's hand twitches ever-so-slightly for his chameleon, but she ignores that. "I picked it up since I'm hyper-sensitive to Flames," she explains, and that's partly true, too.

The baby's gaze never leaves her. "Are you, now."

"I'm hyper-sensitive to Flames," Jai repeats. "And did you know, Reborn, that there's something really strange about that pacifier around your neck?"

Reborn goes quite still. The chameleon transforms into a gun and molds itself under his hand, barrel pointing lazily at the ground. "That," he states, "is none of your concern."

He's the greatest hitman in the world. His reputation is full of blood and murder and bullet wounds. He can kill her right now without a single regret on his mind. The best assassin, unrivaled.

His gun is a warning. A silencer. _Shut up_, it says, because there's no trust between them here.

Jai isn't afraid. "There are old Flames in there," she says softly, gesturing to the pacifier (what is that, anyway?). "Ancient ones. They've been burning for a long time."

Fathomless eyes hook into her skin. "…No, they haven't. They're my own Sun Flames."

Which is impossible.

There's something missing, like a piece dropped from the puzzle box. It's eluding her. Jai stares at Reborn and sees a story in there, a grand tale that spans many years longer than his physical body's age – and yes, she's definitely lacking something here.

Sitting on the dull grey porch of a loud house on a dead-quiet street, Jai almost asks Reborn if he's ever heard of the Trinisette. But the gun is still in his hand, and the shadows creeping up on his face are a good reason to finally feel afraid.

* * *

"You need to tone it down, Jai," Tsuyoshi says as the two of them clean up the tables with soggy towels and bottles of goopy sanitizer. The clock ticks and tocks with the rhythm of half-past eight.

She laughs at the disgruntlement on his face. "What?"

"You heard me."

"Tone down what?"

"Whatever kind of trick you're using to bring customers in." He flicks his wrist in her direction. It's an exasperated gesture, like the kind you would use to ward off mosquitos. "You think this is funny, huh? Do you? With all the customers coming down here, I might just have to expand the shop."

Jai scoots the cleaning-trolley-thing in his direction and shakes the water off her hands. He's just teasing, she knows. "You could, you know! It'd be great for business!"

"I could. But I'm not keen on the idea."

"No?"

"No. I like this place the way it is."

She nods wisely. "Oh, I see! Making it larger would probably ruin all the good vibes you have going, right?"

The man tries to hit her arm with a dirty towel. She shies away, since that's gross. "'Good vibes'," he echoes. "Will you ever talk like a grown adult?"

"I have no idea what you're talking about!" Jai's tone comes off a bit airy between her chuckles. She wanders over to the far wall, where the katanas are set up on little strips of metal for display. "Anyway, I guess people just like the music I play. They only stick around for your food, though!"

She can practically feel how unimpressed Tsuyoshi is at that piece of flattery. "Put your eyebrows back down," she adds, hefting up one of the swords on a whim. "I really meant what I said! You're a great chef!"

The katanas are supposed to be decorative, but the hilt of this one feels smooth. Like someone's pressed their hands against it and squeezed away the shape over thousands of uses.

"I wasn't raising my eyebrows," Tsuyoshi says in the background.

Jai cracks the hilt away from its sheath, revealing a section of old, worn metal. It glimmers a bit under the lamplight. "You totally were! I can feel them rise from miles away! If that makes any sense."

Tsuyoshi doesn't respond. Odd. Usually, they can carry their banter for hours.

She taps the blade with her fingernail. It makes a small pinging sound.

It's a good sword. Good swords just feel loyal when you touch them. This one's been used before, long enough to have a soul to it, just like the shamisen Tsuyoshi's wife used to play. It's kind of weird, because she can feel that the molded shape of the hilt is too wide for her fingers, more suitable for a man with a sturdy grip –

Oh.

Slowly, Jai turns around.

Tsuyoshi gazes back at her. No, not at her. At the katana.

She pulls the sheath back over the blade and asks (to finally confirm her suspicions), "By the way, did you know your son's a part of the mafia?"

His eyes snap back to her own. There's no shock in there. Only surprise. Wariness. Those eyes tell her all that she needs to know.

Jai realizes she's being surrounded by the Vongola on all sides. And Tsuyoshi, who tells her he's actually a _retired assassin_, would have known that all along.

* * *

Reborn hunts her down in the park, lying down on a metal bench with rust creeping along the bars. She senses his presence and lets her hand float in the air in a lazy little wave. Then, it flops back down to brush against the chips of bark on the ground.

For a moment, he lingers to the side. His stare prickles against her neck. "Jai."

Jai tilts her head to look at him. She doesn't feel like moving much. "Hi, Reborn."

"What are you doing here?" the hitman asks, hopping a little closer. He always suits himself up in the same style. "Yamamoto said you were working."

"Oh, I was. I just got off." Her long, wavy hair brushes against her arms. It tickles them. "Say," she says, and pauses for a while. "Tsuyoshi used to be a freelance assassin."

Reborn gives her one slow, deliberate blink. "Did you just find out?"

A laugh escapes her. In her position, lying down, it leaves her breathless. "What, was I supposed to guess?"

"Yes." He smirks. "Yamamoto Tsuyoshi used to be well-known for his work. Not as good as me, though."

She shakes her head and watches the clouds drift by, framed by the splashes of autumn foliage. Beautiful scenery, really. "I knew that man wasn't normal since the beginning. His Flames are big, you know? It's like they take up his whole body, and then spill over – like there's too much of it to contain. But I figured that was just something passed down from his ancestors! You know, inheritance!"

Reborn tugs at the brim of his fedora. "So it's true. You're sensitive to wave energy."

Jai raises her eyebrows. "Wave energy?" All these terms are just popping out of nowhere. She has no idea how to deal with them. They sound unnatural.

"It's what most people call the energy that gets used to produce Dying Will Flames," the infant says curtly, clearly not interested in giving her any more elaboration. "Can you sense anyone's Flames?"

"Oh, mostly. It depends on how strongly it runs." She motions toward the people crossing the street in the far corner of her vision. "For instance, I can't sense the Flames of any of those people from over here. If I got closer, I could narrow it down to a few elements. I can't tell for sure unless their Flames are strong enough."

His eyes flicker impassively. "Do you know the affinities of Tsuna's friends? The kids you met before?"

Jai smiles into herself. "Yeah. He's got great Guardians. Strong ones. And Tsuna's a powerful thing, especially."

She finally gets into a sitting position. Her sandaled feet crunch into the ground in front of Reborn, but she's not looking at him. All she can see is a massive palace in place of the park. Golden draperies combed around the windows. A lovely chandelier levitated above the staircase.

Jai misses that place. Her heart aches for it, just a little.

"Imagine going up to the moon," she says, turning back to Reborn again, "where the only thing around is darkness and emptiness – but there's planet Earth, right in front of you. It's huge, obviously, but not just in size." Her hand extends, stretching out to meet him. "And you can see everything, like the oceans and the trees and the ice in the poles. You're looking at Earth, the only planet with real, sentient life in the entire solar system and beyond."

Just like before, Jai's hand stops halfway in the distance between them. Reborn actually looks hesitant.

"That's what it's like for me, looking at Tsuna. Him and his Flames. I see the entire Sky contained in this one small, deceiving body." Her fingers move forward until they hover inches away from his chest. "Maybe you've caught a glimpse of it, too."

Reborn doesn't move. He doesn't speak.

Jai touches his pacifier.

The baby's eyes widen, surprise filtering through. Clearly, he must feel something, like a reaction to the contact. But Jai –

Jai doesn't feel a thing.

She presses her fingers gently against the shell of the pacifier. It's not glass. Not plastic, either. The Flames inside unfurl a little, flowery and shimmery, but nothing changes. No light, no glow, no heat.

Honestly, she expected more.

After a heartbeat, Jai pulls away, and grins with only the slightest _edge_ of disappointment. "Sorry," she says when Reborn stares down at the pacifier. "It's a pretty interesting thing, you know? I thought I could figure it out if I poked it a little, but I guess – "

"What did you do?" he asks.

"What?" She studies the frown on his face. "I did nothing."

Reborn glances sharply at her before ducking his head again. "Nothing?"

"Mm-hm."

He frowns again, deeper this time, and leaves without another word – almost as if he's in a hurry to get somewhere. All of a sudden. He's a weird guy, she concludes.

Jai watches him toddle off toward the nearby trees and sinks down onto the bench again. The fall breeze picks up.

As always, she has no idea what the future has in store.

It's only mildly terrifying.

* * *

The next time Jai drops by Tsuna's house, the people inside are significantly louder than before. The small cow is wailing and whining in the back, Gokudera is raging at the noise, and amidst the confusion stands a tiny onion with a braid sticking out of the top end.

Jai is absolutely clueless. The onion has a pinched face, a squeaky voice, and walks around like an actual person. She's tactful enough not to ask about it up front, though.

Takeshi notices her befuddlement easily enough, leans over, and says, "Oh. That's I-Pin."

As if that actually makes sense.

Jai doesn't even bother with it, and instead washes her hands of the pandemonium and retreats to the kitchen. She helps Sawada Nana put the freshly cleaned dishes from the dishwasher back into the cupboards. "You're so helpful, Jai-san!" the other woman sings.

There's something about Tsuna's mother that seems slightly off. It could be the fact that she's always apparently oblivious to the noise around her, or the fact that she's cutting the apples with the wrong kind of knife. Either way, Jai doesn't plan on delving into it.

"Where's Reborn?" she asks as she puts the last of the cutlery away. "I haven't said hi to him today."

"Oh, I think he's in the backyard. Could you ask him how he would like his steak? I can't remember if it's rare or medium rare."

"Yeah, sure!"

So Jai goes to the dining room, gives the talking onion a friendly wave, and slides the door open. She stops.

Reborn looks up at her sudden entry. Beside him, an infant with a long black braid wearing scarlet robes sips from a pretty ceramic cup with a matching saucer.

A red pacifier dangles around his neck. It's bursting with Storm Flames. Angry, violent ones that shake and spark like lava and volcano ash. It warps inside its shell, and she knows it would have attacked her by now if it wasn't contained in that little orb.

She exhales.

Reborn isn't the only one. There's more of them.

There's more than one baby with ancient Flames stored inside a pacifier they probably shouldn't even have. Multiple babies. Multiple pacifiers.

"Amazing," Jai says.

As one, they blink at her.

She shakes her head and sits down to scratch Leon's head. "Oh, never-mind. Hi, Reborn!" A grin splits her face. "How's everything holding up?"

"Fine." Reborn smirks at her, like he's found a particularly interesting insect that needs to be studied in a glass bottle. He gestures at the other infant. "Jai, meet Fon. He's an assassin from China."

Fon rises to his feet and bows at the waist, sleeves muffling his hands. There's a curious glint forming in his eyes. "A pleasure to meet you, Jai-san. Have you already met my apprentice, I-Pin?"

I-Pin, the onion. Female? Probably. "Yeah, I've seen her. Nice to meet you too! Is your apprentice one of Tsuna's, now?"

When the babies give her uncomprehending stares, she shrugs. "You know, part of his circle. Famiglia."

Fon laughs, but it seems careless. He doesn't put any emotion behind it. Jai's focus darts back to the Flames throwing a temper tantrum in his pacifier. "I suppose she's taken a liking to Tsuna," he replies lightly, answering and not-answering the question at the same time.

"Oh. Hm." Jai looks at Reborn again. "Hey, so, Sawada wants to know how you like your steak."

"Medium-rare." The hitman gives her a voluminous look. "I was just telling Fon about you. Have you ever heard of him before?"

It's as if he wants to see how she'll react. Jai just laughs, since laughter comes easy to her. "Nah. Before I came here, Reborn, I didn't even know your name!" She shakes her hair out of her eyes. "Anyway, you guys were talking about me? Because I'm sensitive to Flames, that sort of thing?"

Fon smiles pleasantly, but his eyes widen slightly, like he's startled by something she just said. "I apologize for conversing behind your back like this. We spoke only high praises, I assure you."

Jai stares at Fon and his smile. He reminds her of Aiva, actually. That girl was a liar at heart and she never even realized it.

She smiles back. Hers is wider. Happier. Brighter. "Just Jai is fine, by the way. Jai-san never seems to sound right."

Reborn tilts his hat up to get a better look at her. "Are you staying for dinner?"

"Hmm. I think so. Takeshi'll probably accost me at the door if I try to leave now." She folds her arms around her knees, content with the wind blowing in her hair and the sunlight warming her toes. There's no real reason to be nervous around these two. "While I'm here, did you guys want to talk about anything?"

The Sun gives her a needling stare, Leon chirping in his lap. The Storm smiles at her again, but more faintly, like he knows it'll just be seen through. "Not in particular," says the infant in red.

Jai laughs and heads back inside to report back on Reborn's steak preferences. She never looks back at that pair of babies perched on the wooden porch.

Those two are hilarious.

* * *

Actually, now that she thinks about it, her entire life is hilarious. In an absurd and headachy sort of way.

That statement is proven true when she rounds the corner of the street and sees a mass of black ants swarming Tsuna's house. Closer inspection reveals them to be men in monochrome suits, loitering around with the gruff air of people not to be messed with.

Jai messes with everyone, though. The intimidation factor of these guys is so low, it's almost offensive. "What are you guys doing?" she asks one of them.

He scowls and chews the end of his cigarette. His words come out in little puffs of smoke. Which is disgustingly unhealthy for his lungs, the poor man. "None o' your business, lady."

"Right. Is Takeshi in there?"

"I ain't gonna tell you anythin'. Now scram. Only person allowed in 'ere is Vongola Decimo."

She catches sight of a little red person standing on the other end of the street and, seeing the way the men are shuffling around to barricade her, jogs back to where she came from. A left turn, a few meters down the road, and Fon pops out of the neighbor's bush to give her his usual smile.

Jai beams at him. "Hey, Fon! How're you?"

"I'm well, thank you, Jai." He falls in step with her. "I suppose you're wondering what the commotion is all about."

She tells him that yes, she does wonder. The infant chuckles in response, like that somehow amuses him. "They're the Cavallone Famiglia," he explains. "Their boss, Bucking Horse Dino, used to be Reborn's apprentice. He's paying them a friendly visit."

"Really? It looks more like he's laying siege to that house!"

"Are you not impressed by the size of his famiglia? The Chiavarone are made up of over five-thousand members."

"Should I be in awe, then?"

Fon looks mildly amused. His lip curls upward. "Most people are."

Jai laughs and brushes the subject away. Her family was bigger, anyway. "How's your apprentice doing? I haven't had a real chat with her yet. Maybe you could introduce me?"

"I don't think that would be wise." He tilts his head to study her. It's a mystery, what he's searching for. "I-Pin isn't aware I'm still in the area."

She frowns at that. "Really?"

"Yes. No need to worry – she's fully capable of taking care of herself. I'm simply working to make her more independent."

Independence. How very important that is.

The air is silent today. Not a single leaf stirs in the trees. "Then why are you still here?" Jai asks, though not unkindly. "Taking a vacation?"

The Flames in Fon's pacifier roar silently in its cage. His mouth curves into a wide, wide smile. "It feels right, I suppose."

This time, Jai recognizes the spite in his smile. She doesn't know what to think of it.

* * *

Later on, she does end up meeting Dino. The man has twinkling eyes and a lightness in his lips that she admires. He takes her hand with a firm, confident grasp, offers to walk her to Takesushi, and trips over the pebble that was lying a full two feet away from the path he was walking.

"You're incredible," she says. That kind of clumsiness takes a specific skill-set to perfect. Judging from the blush on his features, he doesn't seem all that proud of it. Pity.

"Idiot," Reborn announces as he drills Dino's head into the cemented ground.

Much, much later, Dino approaches her again with only a faint pink tint to his cheeks. With Reborn preoccupied with Tsuna in the background, he offers to take her for a walk and holds out his Sky-touched hand to take hers. "May I have the honor of accompanying you?" the blond asks with only the smallest stutter.

Jai sees the way he stares at her, starry-eyed and tongue-tied. She's not ignorant enough to believe it's not a crush.

Still, it surprises her. This isn't what she expected.

Sadness seeps in through her skin. Happiness lights every one of her limbs on fire. It's been a long time since someone's tried to court her like that. Dino is infatuated with her, but isn't it nice, to be seen in a pretty light like that? Isn't it nice?

She laughs, but it's sad. It's mourning. These complex emotions are waking up all over again and she's not exactly prepared for them. "It was nice meeting you, Dino," she says, which means _no_ in any language she could have spoken.

Dino withdraws like he's been struck. Understandable.

It means a lot to Jai, though, that he would even offer his hand to her. If things were different, she might have taken it. But he's not what she's looking for, and he can't give her what she needs. So.

Some of her thoughts must have shined through whatever expression she's taken on, because Dino smiles through his hurt. It's wobbly, but genuine. "Likewise, Jai," he says.

He takes her hand and kisses it. She laughs and kisses his cheek, too, but the feeling behind their actions isn't love. Its warmth and light, like a distant sun. Like appreciation, and respect, and those sorts of lovely (but not loving) things.

"You handled his puppy crush well," Reborn comments after Dino leaves with his thousands of men. "I thought that would end worse. But you know you might see him again, right?"

Jai snickers and lets Leon crawl up onto her shoulder. "It was just a small thing. He'll move on quickly, I'm sure."

Reborn snorts. His abyssal eyes are distant. "My students are hopeless romantics. I doubt there'll be any future heirs for the Vongola after Tsuna takes up the title."

"They might just learn one day," she says. "It'd be good for them, because – "

Love is worth it, in her opinion. It frees people, if only for a moment.

Love is nice, she thinks.

* * *

Reborn and Fon aren't friends. Jai thought so, at first.

They're connected in some way, somehow, like there are invisible threads tying them together. It's probably something to do with the pacifiers. But they're not friends.

Because Reborn is smug. Arrogant. Unreadable, and yet he can probably see through everyone's psychology on the spot. He's the greatest hitman in the world, is why.

Fon is humble. Graceful. Kind in all definitions of the word, and yet there's that sense of spite lurking in everything he says, which Reborn can comprehend far better than Jai can. Fon doesn't seem to like that.

They dance around each other, Sun and Storm. The former's pacifier shimmers with Sun Flames, which are steady. Unyielding. _Blank_. The latter's pacifier yearns to break its prison apart and tears itself apart in the process.

Everything about them feels wrong, but she likes them and their company. At least when they're with her, it feels right.

Sort of.

Jai finds herself drawn to them most of the time, especially on her daily walks. They stumble across each other without even meaning to, since that's how the world works, and this particular planet can be incredibly stubborn with connecting people.

The world has always worked in circles. She finds it amusing.

Until one day, Jai goes into Tsuna's house with a full pack of six pocky boxes in her hands. She puts them in Tsuna's pantry, follows the noises up the stairs, and opens the door to the Sky's bedroom to greet Takeshi and maybe poke fun at the kids for a while.

She takes one grand step inside, and never gets any farther.

Everything is levitating.

Jai sees a boy standing in the middle of the room. He has galaxies in his eyes, meteors raining down, nebulae swirling where his irises should be. Slowly, she closes the door behind her.

There isn't a single tendril of Flames in this boy's body.

He's Flameless. According to that fact, he's lifeless. He should be dead.

"Okay," she says, and nothing seems quite so amusing anymore.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** so a lot of these snippets, like the ones with dino and fon, were mostly unplanned, but it still works out. next up are some interactions with fuuta de la stella, more arcobaleno, and…yeah, getting closer to mukuro's arc. thanks for reading!


	4. Brown

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** i was going to work on sleeping lions lie, but then i started listening to the soundtrack for httyd2 and it, like, inspired me for this story. and if you haven't listened to the soundtrack you really should because golly gosh is it gorgeous or what

* * *

4\. BROWN

* * *

Jai's leader, Pir, knew plenty of old legends. One of them was about a boy who was sweet and kind. He grew out of a tree of starlight, but was missing his eyes, and found them in the hands of a village girl. That's why eyes are windows to the soul, Pir told them wisely.

"My name is Fuuta de la Stella," says the Flameless boy, and suddenly that legend is all Jai can think about.

He says he can do this weird thing – ranking people. High to low. Top to bottom. First to last, best to worst. When he does, the fragile wisp of Sky Flame inside him flickers out, and it's like he's dead and not dead at the same time. Which doesn't make any sense.

He can hear the calling of a planet from galaxies away. The Ranking Planet. That power is godly. She doesn't even know if it should exist.

With Takeshi and the others, she watches as Fuuta de la Stella does the impossible and stares at a world beyond the reach of the sun. She watches as the galaxies in his eyes falter when the rain comes pattering down, and she watches as he smiles at Tsuna like the Sky is his new everything in life.

His Flame is no bigger than the tip of a candle. Maybe not even that. A little spark trailing from a fire. She can just barely sense it, and only because she's digging deep enough.

As the rain pours down outside and Tsuna's friend, Haru, escorts the boy to the kitchen for some hot chocolate, Jai gets to her feet and follows them. She sits down on the couch beside him.

"Hi," Fuuta says shyly. "You're Tsuna-nii's friend, right? Um, Jai-san?"

Jai smiles. The rain pitters and patters. "Just Jai is fine. Would you tell me something, Fuuta de la Stella?"

He blinks at her, and he has to tilt his head very slightly upward to meet her gaze. Right now, his eyes are a person's eyes. Not a star's. "Like what?"

Carefully, she takes his tiny hand in her own, curling her fingers around his. Her Flames reach out to him, deep and deeper until they brush against his spark of Sky. It's such a frail, feeble thing, and Jai lets her Sun Flames course through both of their bloodlines until that pretty spark begins to flare.

Fuuta's eyes widen. His cheeks flush as pink as lotus petals.

"Can you keep a secret?" Jai asks.

* * *

It's a cold winter, but Jai still takes Fuuta out for ice cream. She doesn't get any herself – whipped, sugary stuff was never her thing – but he gets a chocolate scoop that smears across the corners of his lips.

They take a stroll on one of the park trails. The trees are brown and barren, towering above them and cracking the bright sky apart. The birds are calming. Quiet.

"A deer," Fuuta breathes, and Jai looks up to see a creature with a tanned pelt and forked antlers. It stares at them with big, bright eyes, framed by long lashes and little white spots.

Magnificent. Don't scare it away. _Hush._

It walks across the path on slender legs and disappears, but the wonder Fuuta feels at the sight of it makes his Flame leap and surge. She laughs and decides to take him down the path a little further.

Eventually, they stop. Jai hasn't felt this nervous in quite some time.

"Do you think you can rank me?" she asks.

Fuuta doesn't hesitate for too long. "Um, what do you want to know?"

"Well…" She thinks she's allowed to be specific. "Can you rank things other than people?"

"No."

"Can you tell me how likely I am out of all people to find the Trinisette?"

He nods, and doesn't question it. His eyes spin with constellations. The fallen leaves at their feet tremble as they rise into the air, brushing against her arms, her neck, her shoulders.

She's in awe. This shouldn't even be possible, but it is, and that almost scares her. As it should.

The lilting noise strung from his mouth is a murmuring, rippling mess of sounds. Like the vibrations of the Earth, she realizes. "Ranking Planet, I hear you," he says. "Out of 14,200 people, Jai is ranked—"

His breath catches. He stumbles. The leaves freeze in place all around them.

"Fuuta?" she asks.

The boy stares at her with an open mouth, stars receding from his eyes. "It can't see you," he whispers. "The Ranking Planet can't see you. But…why?"

The cold edge of disappointment bites into her skin. Then again, she already suspected this might happen. "You can stop, Fuuta."

The weight of gravity once more weighs against her shoulders. Fuuta stumbles among the crispy scent of dirt and old foliage. "That's not right," he comments with a scrunched-up frown. "I thought every person in the world could be seen by the Ranking Planet."

Jai just shakes her head. "Don't tell anyone, alright?"

"Why? Does it matter?"

"It does to me." She resigns herself to the expression forming on the boy's face. Distrustful. Wary. Figures, seeing as she's withholding information from his new big brother and his friends. "I'm no ordinary person. Nobody needs to know."

Fuuta sets his jaw. On a face like his, still packed with baby fat, most people would find it hard to take him seriously. She does, though.

"How come I can't tell Tsuna-nii? He's your friend," he accuses.

Jai kneels down. "Fuuta, I would never hurt Tsuna." She wouldn't be able to, even if she wanted to. It's near impossible to take down such a vast sky as that. "But this isn't for him to know. Please don't tell anyone? Please?"

After a few seconds, the boy bobs his head. Reluctantly, of course. "Alright."

"We were never here?"

"We were never here."

* * *

Jai's good at playing catch. In fact, she has excellent reflexes. She's proud of that much, at least.

She remembers going down to the shoreline with her friends and tossing each other jagged pieces of seashells. Over and over and over, until they were good enough to stop getting scrapes and callouses on the skin beneath their knuckles.

When that got boring, Dineva would start a game. _Catch_, she would say with fox-like eyes as she tossed Jai a little ball of her own Storm Flame. Jai would throw it to Faux, and Faux to Aiva, and Aiva to Hatz. And so on and so forth, playing catch in the salty breeze and the cascades of diamond sand, with the ocean laughing with them in their ears.

Those moments make up her best memories.

Sitting at the empty sushi bar, Jai lets her Sun Flames form into a tight sphere. It spins on the tip of her fingernail crookedly, in the same way Earth does – on a tilted axis. It looks like a mini sun. She always thought that was neat.

She puts her bare feet on the countertop, since Tsuyoshi isn't around to yell at her for it. Then, she throws the ball at the wall.

_Come back_, she calls (because her Flames don't bounce), and so the little sun pulls itself in the opposite direction to return to her finger.

So, without anything better to do, Jai does that a few times. Hit the wall, return. Hit the wall, return. It's incredibly boring without a second player.

She makes a second ball and throws them both. Two hits, two returns.

This is boring. Jai's hungry.

After almost a year since she first woke up inside that tomb, her Flames are recovering nicely. She lets them loose.

After a few minutes of messing aroun, the jangling of bells attached to the front door reach her ears. "We're closed, moron!" Jai shouts as she sprawls over the top of the sushi bar. "Tsuyoshi, you said you'd only be gone for, what, ten minutes?"

"It's us, Jai."

She lifts her head off the back of the chair and catches a glimpse of Takeshi staring at her, along with the two babies, Tsuna, and Gokudera. "Oh! Hey! What brings you guys?"

"Uh—" Takeshi looks around the room. "Jai…what's this?"

Jai swings herself into a normal sitting position and surveys her work. The lines in the wooden grain of the floorboards glow with a faint trickle of sunshine. The dimmed lamps have gotten brighter, and the fake flowers sitting on each table of the sushi shop have caught on fire.

She grins and beckons them inward. "Your dad made me wait here while he fetches lunch in the city, so I screwed around a little. Why're you guys cramped up next to the screen like that? Get over here!"

Slowly, Takeshi steps forward. He looks down as light shimmers against his shoes. "I…wow. You did this?"

"What exactly did you do?" Tsuna asks, gaping at the golden light spilling over all the surfaces. The place has a dreamy, ghostly quality to it.

Fon and Reborn are the first ones to join her at the bar. "Impressive," Fon says, his eyes drinking in the scene. The Sun gives the Storm an unreadable glance.

Now that she thinks about it, this is only the second time she's ever showed them her power. Well.

Jai drags a few chairs back for the boys to plop down in. "I was going for a desert sunset feel, you know? To make the place more…" She gestures at the air. "_Aesthetically pleasing_, or something."

"Th-These are Dying Will Flames." Gokudera almost misses the chair as he tries to sit down. He devours the room with his eyes, and turns to her. "So you _aren't_ trying to burn down Takesushi?"

She tilts her head. Draws out the silence. "Nah."

"Don't tell me you just considered it," Tsuna mutters under his breath. And louder, "How did you do this? How's this even possible? Everything's glowing!"

"Simple! You just kind of put your Flames into whatever you want!" Jai laughs at the expression on the Sky's face. He looks flabbergasted (she finds that word hilarious). "Don't try to pretend it's such a big feat, just because it looks nice! Anyway, why'd you guys drop by? Weren't you hanging around somewhere else?"

Takeshi tears his eyes off the nice lights to look at her. They're a pretty honey shade, now. Not that they weren't before, but now, his eyes are all glowing and mystical. Like, wooo. "We actually just dropped by on a whim—"

"You dragged us in here, baseball idiot!"

"—and Reborn and Fon wanted to visit, anyway."

She grins at the two. "Did you? Well, if you're up for a late lunch, you can stick around until Tsuyoshi gets back and we can share."

Takeshi rubs the back of his head. "Why didn't Dad just make it himself, like usual?"

"He wanted to try the new dango place that opened up! You know, the one around the corner of Aoyama Avenue?"

Reborn tilts his fedora up. "You can't have just dango for lunch. It's unhealthy."

She makes her weirdest face at him, which puts a horrified look on Tsuna's face for whatever reason. "Tsuyoshi and I are grown-ups. We can have whatever we want and regret all our life decisions later."

"There's something wrong with you," Gokudera says. With a laugh, Jai leans over to high-five him. He leans away from her hand like it carries the old plague.

Fon taps her arm to draw her attention. "It's quite the display of power, what you've done," he says. "I had no idea you had this much prowess over your Flames."

She raises an eyebrow – and she can actually do it now, just raise one eyebrow without moving the other. Thanks to learning from watching Reborn. "Aw, not really. It's just a little trick."

"You're awfully humble today." Reborn gestures at the starry sparks cradled in the palms of her hands. "It's rare to see people with this level of control when they're not using a specific technique. This is freeform?"

That doesn't…sound right.

Something about the whole situation is unsettling her, and she almost tells them so. There's a nagging feeling in her gut that says, hey, what's going on? What's this supposed to be? "You're kidding," she replies.

The hitman studies her for a quick half-second. "Hm?"

Jai waves her sparkling hands at him, just in case she's completely misreading the situation or he's someone gone blind. "I wouldn't expect _Ryohei_ to pull this off so easily, since he doesn't know about Flames, but _you?_ You're telling me you can't do this?" Her arm sweeps past them. "For Suns, this should be child's play! You've never messed around like this before?"

When Reborn continues to stare at her, she flares the lights in the floorboards and lets the Flames around the fake flowers extinguish themselves.

"When drawn from Sun Flames, basic light is the easiest form of creation. In other words, simple matter." She makes another small sun in her hands and lets it hover harmlessly above the counter. "True Flame is harder, of course. So is heat. That's basic theory – ring any bells?"

The three kids are hanging around in the background, thoroughly confused. Reborn and Fon give her blank looks. It's unsettling.

"That's the first time I've heard that," the hitman says bluntly. "Where did you learn it?"

What?

Jai frowns. It's the first real frown she's made in a while. The sunshine in the room fades back into the regular lamplight as her Flames slip away from her. "Wait, wow! That's one of the first lessons I was ever given! What else don't you know, Flame coherence? Or, what—" She laughs. "Transferring Flames, even?"

Those last two questions are literally meant as jokes.

Mainly because the picture being painted right now is looking ridiculously wrong, and she's found herself utterly confused.

"Flame coherence?" Reborn echoes.

"Transferring Flames?" Fon parrots.

Jai's heart does a weird stop-start thing, like most people's hearts do when they're in shock.

She takes up a handful of Sun Flames. "These are Flames," she states, her voice betraying a bit of the incredulity fluttering inside. "Reborn, you're the world's most powerful hitman. Fon, you're an assassin and one of the strongest Storm's I've seen. You can't possibly expect me to believe that you don't know these things. _Everyone_ should know how to do those things."

She hopes they're just messing with her, because if they didn't know…well, that'd just be ridiculous.

Slowly, Fon shakes his head. His voice is tinged with a sense of puzzlement. "Jai. If I am understanding this right, you can't…_transfer_ Dying Will Flames to other people. That would be impossible."

"No, but it is. It is possible."

"I…hardly believe—" He stares at her with a sudden intensity. "Jai?"

Jai doesn't want to see the look on her own face.

So this is how it is.

The thing is, she and her friends grew up with Flames. They knew what this power meant, what it could be – the potential it had. They knew how to draw landscapes in the air with their own rainbows, how to dance with Flames racing up their heels. How to be a part of the sky and understand, _really_ understand, that _life is fire._

And apparently that knowledge is lost. Gone. Buried. She's had her suspicions, but this has to be the most unpleasant surprise she's experienced so far – to confirm that these people (who are _supposed_ to be the _strongest_) don't even know their own potential.

That's sad. She doesn't like it.

"Are drawing out your Flames and coming up with personal techniques the only thing you know how to do?" She thinks about forcing a laugh, but decides it isn't really worth it. "Has anyone ever told you to not use a weapon without knowing its parts?"

Reborn and Fon are staring at her again. "Ye—" Fon tries to say.

"Don't use a weapon without knowing its parts," she interrupts him. Either way, it clearly hasn't been said to them often enough.

A heartbeat later, the world shifts. A slip of inspiration. An _idea._

This is how Jai joins the mafia game.

* * *

They start at step one. An impromptu lesson on top of Tsuna's roof. She shows only Fon, at first.

"Pretend you know nothing," she says, crouched down in front of him, "nothing about Wave Energy, or Dying Will, or even Storm and Sun. No meditation, no magic tricks. Let's start from scratch."

(They don't understand the meaning of True Fire. Jai figures she can remedy that.)

"Alright," Fon says agreeably, with a companionable smile on his face. He finds her insistence amusing, her enthusiasm interesting in the same way a child's obsession with a certain color can be interesting.

Jai takes her heart and pulls. A Flame gathers inside her hand. It sparks and shines, and it's her purest Flame, sweet yellow without a trace of orange or white. "Take it," she says.

Fon shakes his head. "You _do_ realize it's not possible for me to just—"

She takes her Flame – her softest piece of sunlight – and presses it against his. He's a tempest, a violent wraith, and she holds her fragment of sun out to the wind. She lets it flicker in the invisible breeze.

Something snaps, like a thread (not painful, but close), and this Flame isn't hers anymore. It's Jai's Sun Flame, her creation, but not _hers_ anymore.

It's Fon's Flame now. His.

"Jai," the infant breathes, his eyes impossibly wide.

"Yours." She takes his hands into her own. "_Yours_."

Fon makes a sharp sound as the Flame pours into his hands. She can sympathize. It's always hard, to accept someone else's Flame for the first time. It's taking a piece of someone's life and making it yours. Not theirs. Yours.

It's terrifying, the first time. To hold someone's life in your hands.

Imagine cradling a child.

Jai's laughter spills out over the rooftop as Fon stares at the Sun Flame – _his_ Sun Flame. She touches his arm and feels it tremble. "Do you like it?"

He can't tear his eyes off the glow in his hands. The Flames in his pacifier have quieted, like every single part of him is in awe. "This is—I don't—"

"No worries! You're still a Storm, through and through." Jai's grin comes out a little bit wicked. "But how's it feel, carrying the Sun?"

Fon glances up at her. He's stunned. Awed. Wary. "Unbelievable," he murmurs. "It should be impossible, to…transfer Flames from one person to another like this. How?"

"Simple! I gave to you. You accepted."

"I am a _Storm_ user, I shouldn't…I shouldn't be able to do this. These are _Sun_ Flames. This isn't _mine_."

She lets her grin fall away. "Then give it back."

His flinch is almost violent. "What?"

Jai gazes back at him, knowing this is one of the things he needs to learn. Her mentors told her the exact same thing once, when she was young and still learning how to give and take. "If you don't claim it, then give it back."

The baby shakes his head, black braid whipping around behind him. "I…" he says, curling his fingers around the Sun Flame. I can't, he wants to say.

Her smile is softer than the light in his grasp. "Yours," she repeats.

Fon shakes and shivers and trembles, his composure and fake smiles and facades all but vanished. She knows it's always hard the first time, but she didn't expect it to be so difficult for him – to be aware of the living fire in his hands.

"Don't be afraid," she says.

* * *

Jai doesn't just _join_ the mafia game – she dives in headfirst. That's what happens, she thinks, when you start working with a great assassin and a hitman with an enormous reputation in the underworld.

She practices with Fon nearly every single day, since neither of them have anything else particularly important to do. Eventually, she manages to drag Reborn into one of their sessions. Actually participating, instead of just watching and observing.

"Can you use that Flame?" the hitman asks sharply, watching the Sun Flames flicker in Fon's lap. "Even if it's not your natural affinity?"

Jai grins at the sort of undeniable intrigue in his voice. They're sitting on the back porch of Tsuna's house, enjoying the chilly air and the creamy hot chocolate Sawada gave them. "Not really! Even if the Flames are yours, they're still not your _creation_. There's a big difference there. So you can't use it for much besides setting things on fire, like regular flames do."

"Then what's the point?" Reborn asks.

She laughs so hard her sides feel like collapsing.

True, Flames are created to be weapons. They always have. But the give and take of Flames goes beyond that. This power can be beautiful, so beautiful that it doesn't need to be used in battle to still be something precious.

"C'mere, Reborn," she says as she wipes the tears leaking from her eyes. "Let me show you."

She's not their teacher, and they're not her apprentices. No, not when their eyes are far older than their bodies' age. But she'll show them the paths, maybe push them a little. They'll turn out fine.

Jai takes Reborn's hands and gives him her Flame, just as she did with Fon. Reborn holds it for a grand total of three seconds.

Then, he puts it out.

Jai stares.

And then she howls with laughter, curling up on the deck. "You put it out?" she wheezes. "Oh, you did! You actually—you extinguished—stars, that's rich!" She laughs until her breathes start rattling in her chest. "Nobody's ever done that their first time before! _That's_ your reaction? Just put out the fire?"

It's hilarious, the look he gives her. She wonders why his first instinct is to get rid of the fire. Maybe he's just paranoid.

Reborn frowns and cocks his gun at her. His expression is dark, even for him. "Again."

She lets Reborn try as long as he likes, until he can squash the urge to put out the Flames, and both infants can finally sit with her Sun Flames in their hands. Reborn hums and mutters something under his breath.

"There's no point in giving Flames to each other during battle," Jai says, staring up at a pallid sky. "But there are plenty of other reasons to do it." Just as there's a whole bunch of reasons for why anyone would care for a child.

Fon hops onto her stomach. "Would it be possible," he says, and hesitates for a moment, "for me to give my own Flames to someone else?"

"That's harder," Jai replies immediately. "It's always harder to give than to take. You might not be comfortable with it."

His eyes are narrow and firm. "Will you show me, Jai?"

She ponders it for a moment. "Why not?" she wonders out loud.

This is what she wants, after all.

* * *

On the tenth of February, snow buries the city two feet deep. The streets are empty. Pedestrians dress head to toe in ruffled up coats and fur-trimmed hoods. Jai loves the quiet.

She takes the back alleys to Takesushi. It's a longer route, and definitely more dangerous, but she wants to leave her footprints in those pristine strips of snow. Hers, and only hers.

The gangs and the homeless are gone. Maybe they've found someplace warmer, or maybe Reborn's presence is scaring them away. He rides on one of her shoulders, with Fon balancing it out on the other. They're both smothered in mini winter sweaters.

"You know what this reminds me of?" she asks them between puffs of white smokey stuff, trudging through the cold thickness. The snow seeps into her boots. It's like a covering of ice for her toes.

"You can't possibly expect us to believe you're not freezing," replies Fon, completely ignoring her question. "Couldn't you have brought yourself a light jacket, at least? Would it have hurt you so terribly?"

She laughs. "Hey, come on, listen! Know what this reminds me of?"

"What?"

"Winter in Budapest! You guys have been there, right? When the river freezes over, it turns into this really, really pretty blue – and wowie-wow, it's gorgeous!"

Reborn pinches her ear. "Don't say 'wowie-wow' with a straight face. It's embarrassing."

"It _is_ a nice view," Fon provides mildly as Jai bats the other baby away.

They all look up as a few snowflakes twirl down from the white, blank, brand new sky. She catches one on her finger and watches the little details melt into the swirls of her finger-pad. "It might snow all day today." Fon's voice tickles in her right ear. "Perhaps you should pick up the pace a little, Jai?"

Jai snickers. Her own breath feels hot beneath her tongue. "Sure, sure!" A bit of green sticking out of a dusty windowsill catches her attention. "Oh, hey! Hold on a second."

There's a long vine hanging out of the cracked window. Shiny. Green. Her companions fall silent as she strokes one of the curving leaves. "Wow," she says.

"That's a pothos plant," Reborn remarks as one of his usual trivia tidbits.

"Why's it still alive? It's freezing out here!"

"Perhaps they're growing from a water leak inside the building."

"But it hasn't frosted over, or gotten buried under the snow, or…anything." Carefully, she tucks the hanging part of it back inside the room – an abandoned apartment, it looks like. "I like it!"

Fon's exasperation practically radiates from him. "You like everything."

"Quit messing around," the Sun adds. "Keep moving while the snow's still picking up."

These guys have no sense of delight whatsoever. There's a term for it, she thinks. Xenophobia? Something like that.

Her Sun Flames brush the leaves through her fingers. The entire plant glows, trembling from the love of the sun. Its longest leaves furrow and reach out to her, waving, calling in voices too quiet for her to hear.

"What are you doing?" Reborn asks, his voice crackling.

She pulls away from the pothos to grin at him. "Helping it grow! Some plants are like that – they just have a will of their own. Like the weeds in the cracks in the sidewalk." She starts walking down the alley again. "It's always best to help them along, even if you're not sure what they're trying to accomplish."

Fon hums deep in his throat. "Is this a special ability of yours?"

Jai beams between the two of them. "Nah, any Sun can do it! Reborn, I can show you how, if you want. It's a neat thing to learn if you're willing."

"Hmm."

The snowfall thickens to the point where her eyelashes are fringed with crystals. She can feel snowflakes lacing her lips and eyebrows and hair. "I can show you guys so many things," she says after a while, warmth settling in her chest at the thought, "like sensing other people's Flames, and sending up flares, and using light and heat. I can show you how to be in perfect control, and how to do coherence, and…wow, there's so much you could do! The potential goes on forever! You'll see – it'll be fantastic!"

"And how exactly did you learn all of that?" Reborn asks. Something about his voice has changed, but she can't quite place what it is.

She wipes a patch of snow off her nose. "I told you, I grew up with it. It's like I always knew."

"Who taught you?"

"Oh. Tons of people, actually. Too many to name, and Reborn, I can hear it when Leon changes into a gun. Especially when it's that close." Jai turns the corner and sees Takesushi's bordered sign up ahead, across the street. "Just because I'm not in the mafia doesn't mean I can't know about Flames. You know that, right?"

Reborn's gun makes a small clicking noise. "Since you're skilled with Sun Flames, are you trained in combat? Your reflexes are good enough."

"Reborn," says Fon, oddly pensive.

Jai finds herself smiling, if only to hide the itching fear of getting shot in the head and dying. Reborn's shot at her a few times before, but she's always dodged the bullets. Now, there's no room to avoid one (not that he would actually try to kill her, no). "I'm actually horrible at fighting. I've been trained, but I hate fighting people. Won't do it if I can't help it. Healing's more my thing."

Suddenly, they have no more time to talk, because she's right in front of Takesushi and swinging the door open. The familiar tinkle of bells rings through her ears.

"Morning, Tsuyoshi!" she calls, dusting off the tops of her boots.

The man looks up from whatever book he's reading on the counter. His eyebrows shoot skyward. "Hello, Jai, and take off those boots before they drip all over the floor. Why aren't you wearing a coat?"

"Coats are uncomfortable."

"Your lack of one makes me uncomfortable. At least go upstairs and get Takeshi to give you a blanket. You might catch a cold otherwise."

"Yes, sir!" She points at the infants on her shoulders. "By the way, I invited these two for breakfast with me. Your treat."

He glares at her, his lips twitching into a smile. "My treat?"

"Technically, you're the one who's paying me, so—"

"Who even _has_ sushi for breakfast?" Takeshi's voice rings out from somewhere upstairs in the back. Apparently, he's left his door open, so their voices are loud enough for him to hear.

"Your dad does!" Jai calls back as she slips off her boots. Reborn and Fon hop off onto the nearest table, obviously amused. "He eats sushi every meal, every single day! He might as well marry a fish!"

Tsuyoshi gives her a very pointed look. "If you don't get out of my sight right now, I'll be serving _you_ on top of the rice. In _slices_."

Her grin stretches until it hurts. "You have to _thaw_ me, first. You're a horrible chef."

He reaches to his side and grabs his largest cutting knife. She cackles with laughter as she dives up the stairs – the newly renovated staircase, much to their pride – and flits across the hallway.

On a whim, with her intuition singing a song of _listen, listen, listen_, she enters their little laundry room. The air is always musty, and there are lint scraps literally everywhere on the floor. She gets down on her knees, pressing her ear to the wooden boards.

The conversation at the bar floats into her hearing range. It's muffled, and they're speaking in low voices. How frustrating.

"…in Vongola's affairs," Tsuyoshi says, his voice harsh and strangely raw. "What are you planning, Reborn?"

"Nothing big, Tsuyoshi. I've already determined she's not a threat."

"She has no records, no relatives, she plays no part—"

"She is fully aware of the kind of people she is surrounding herself with, Tsuyoshi-san." Fon speaks now. Calmly. Gently. "And fully capable, might I add."

A grudging pause. "You've been playing nice, considering your usual methods. Why?"

"Her willingness. She considers Tsuna your ally. If not him, then your son."

"There's more to it than—"

"Tsuyoshi-san, please lower your voice. I suspect these walls are not as thick as they may seem."

Jai snickers under her breath, straightens up, and steps back into the hallway. "Takeshi! Fetch me blankets!" she yells in the direction of his bedroom. "And come join me in eavesdropping on the guys downstairs! They're talking about the mafia game and I can't understand a word of it!"

Someone splutters – possibly Tsuyoshi, or Takeshi, or both at the same time. "You're not supposed to admit you're eavesdropping on people!" Takeshi shouts back.

She squeezes out the melted snowflakes in her hair. They splatter darkly against the floorboards. "Blankets, Taketake!"

"Ah, geez, they're _coming!"_

"What is it with her," Fon mutters. She doesn't hear Reborn reply.

* * *

The clink of a glass draws her attention to the customers seating themselves at the bar. A young man and a little girl with a flowery hat. She hasn't seen them around before, but they seem friendly enough. "Hey!" she calls. "How're you guys doing?"

The man whips his head around. He scrunches his brow. "Er…fine, thank you?"

"That's good! Nice tie, by the way! It suits y—"

In the corner of her eye, Tsuyoshi throws up his hands and almost sends his pen flying. "Jai, I can't hear this gentleman's order when you're screaming at customers on the other side of the room!" he barks.

A smattering of laughter from the other tables. The man and the little girl smile tentatively around them. She grins, and the thrum of music vibrates the blood in her fingers as she plucks out Dineva's songs in the heart of the shamisen. "Sorry, sorry!"

"There's no privacy in this place," says the customer seated at the table nearby. His grey eyes twinkle merrily. Like sun flares.

Jai laughs. She likes this guy, Shohei. One of their regulars. Somehow, he manages to pull off being a jerk and a fantastic person at the same time. "Hey, I can give people privacy! But there's no harm in saying hi, is there? That's how you make friends!"

"You're such a humanitarian, aren't you," he mutters.

She lets her bari glide over the strings. "Well, hey, you're the one who comes here every week."

"It's because of your music, Jai," says the old lady – Minako – in the far corner of the room. "We're all in love. And I have no doubt that includes you, young man!"

Her husband rumbles with laughter, along with all the other eavesdroppers. Shohei smiles at her, looking completely lost on how to respond.

Jai's throat hurts from laughing too hard and shouting too loud. She ingrains his put-off face into her memory.

"Hear that, Tsuyoshi?" she asks as the chef approaches her side. "I'm famous, aren't I?"

Tsuyoshi snorts and pretends to dump the pitcher of water on her. She tries to kick him in the shin and misses. On purpose, of course.

As he moves away, Jai sighs and switches to one of the old Japanese folk songs she's learned. "A bit emptier today," she comments toward the room as a whole. "Normally it's loud enough in hear to break the sound barrier."

Some of the people sitting around the big tables crane their heads around. "People are at home for the Winter Olympics," one of them says.

"Ohhh! Right, forgot about that."

"Go Japan!" someone hollers out of the blue.

"Go France!"

"What do you mean, 'go France', you moron—"

"Who else watches just for the judo?"

"Judo's a summer sport."

"Our boxing team is legitimately disgraceful, though. Have you even—"

The voices rise. These people go absolutely mad for sports. They're all insane. She doesn't really get it, but they're hyped up and happy about it. So, hey.

As the tables cry out their passion and national pride, Jai cocks her head. She hears the sound of tinkling bells, and sees a familiar fedora make its way through the sea of shoes and table legs. A snort of laughter escapes her.

"You're spending way too much time around here," she tells Reborn as he toddles over to her chair. "Aren't you supposed to be Tsuna's tutor? Boosting up his grades and everything?"

He smirks widely. "Dame-Tsuna's working on cracking the code for the bombs I planted around his room. I'm keeping him busy."

"Nice!" She motions him to the empty seats at the bar directly next to her. "You have to try the takoyaki udon this time, alright? It's literally the best thing, and the fact that you haven't even tasted it yet after all the times you've been here is just _sickening_."

Reborn keeps smirking at her. "I brought a few more people with me this time."

Jai looks around. It's too hard to pick out their Flames in this place. "I'm guessing Fon is one of them?"

"Him, and two others I want you to meet."

As soon as he says it, three – _three_ – infants toddle over. Fon gives her one of his rare, real smiles as he hops up onto his seat. That leaves the other two.

One of them is blond. Blue-eyed, like chipped-off gems and geodes. His bandana looks like it was scraped off the skin of a turtle. He scowls at her, studying her in the same way most mafia people tend to do.

His pacifier is blue, flickering with Rain Flames. The pattern is like rain itself – light and jittery.

There's not much to the third one besides the helmet and the suit to match it. White and purple all over. She squints a little and tries to imagine a pair of eyes behind the green visor, but the glassy material is too thick for her to see through. Maybe that's the point. But—

The Cloud Flames in his pacifier are _watching her_.

"You're the one who's been teaching those two some tricks, kora?" asks the Rain, even though she's only partly listening.

The Cloud sniffs. "This lady? She doesn't seem like much."

Here's two more. That makes four infants and four pacifiers total. Sun, Storm, Rain, and Cloud – oh, Jai will eat her tongue if there aren't three more to finish off the set. Lightning, Mist and Sky are all they're missing. Maybe they're part of a family. A famiglia.

It's all one big mystery.

She's been in Namimori for almost a year, and the clues are popping up one by one. All it takes is patience. It's a waiting game that isn't taking place in just her head anymore.

Jai finishes off her song with a rolling chord. "Hey, I'm Jai. And you?"

"Colonnello." The Rain jerks his thumb to the other newcomer. "That's Skull."

Skull's entire body jerks, his fists clenching. He looks lively enough. "Oi, let me introduce myself! I'm—"

"He's our errand boy," Reborn interrupts. Jai's never seen anyone dismiss a person so easily before. "He tried to take revenge against Tsuna and failed miserably, so he's paying for our dinner."

A quick break wouldn't hurt, so she sets the shamisen to the side. "Take revenge? Since when?"

"You didn't hear the explosions?"

She laughs. "Things blow up in Namimori so often, it kinda filters out as background noise at this point. Revenge for what, though?"

"You guys wrecked my entire fleet!" Skull puffs as he hauls himself into his chair with significantly more effort. "My boss was so furious, he almost tried to kill me! And I've lost half my subordinates!"

Reborn flips through the menu. She notices he's looking at the bottom of the pages, where the most expensive meals are. "You never had subordinates. You were already the lowest of them all."

"Y-You bastard—"

"Shut up and start preparing your wallet's funeral," Colonnello says as he whips out a rifle – a big, black gun that manifested out of thin air – and bashes Skull over the head. It leaves a large, caving dent behind.

Actually, that dent looks kind of worrisome. "Is this their thing?" she asks Fon, just to make sure.

"It is," he says as he peruses through the rolls section. _Peruses_ seems like the right word only because of how elegant it sounds. "Skull's famiglia, the Carcassa, launched an attack against an international mafia establishment several days ago. He was defeated thanks to their efforts. Twice, now." His eyes lift to meet hers, but the contact is brief. "As for Colonnello…well, he may have witnessed us demonstrating some of your Flame techniques."

Jai leans forward. "You practiced with each other, then?"

Reborn and Fon exchange glances. Discreetly, within the tight line they've formed, Fon makes a scarlet Flame in his hands and tosses it to his left, parallel to the countertop. Reborn catches it, and his Sun Flames wrap around it in his most subtle manner, weaving into the tendrils with a flurry of rainbow sparks.

It's a small Flame, but they do it like they've been practicing for years. And there's no hesitation, no fear – just small, contented smiles spreading across their faces.

This is good. This is _great._

She whoops and pumps her fists into the air. "Yeah!" she cries, her voice drowned out by the heated sports debate overtaking the restaurant. "You achieved Flame coherence! You pulled it off! I knew you could! It's about time you figured it out – you guys are amazing!"

Reborn smirks with his usual pride. "Of course we did it. What did you expect?"

"We can move on to the next, yes?" Fon asks, ambitious as always.

"Sure!" Jai exclaims, her gaze moving to the Rain and the Cloud. They watched the Flames cohere with wide, sharp eyes, and now they're watching _her_ with wider, sharper ones. This is probably around the point where the wheels are starting to turn, and the world is picking up its pace.

She's ready for anything.

* * *

This is how the mafia starts to notice Jai.

She thinks this'll be fun.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** this fic will be stretched out as i continuously come up with more content for future chapters. so far so good! mukuro's arc will show up in the next chapter along with one more of the arcobaleno.

i'm just a little bit dissatisfied because i feel like i'm not portraying jai's complex understanding of Flames accurately enough (probably should've done some more foreshadowing beforehand, or something), but everything will probably turn out fine later. it's also really limiting to write in only her perspective, mainly because there are lots of things going on in her interactions with other people that could be explored in different viewpoints, so it's frustrating. but it's definitely good practice.

also, thank you very much for the new reviews, follows, and favorites! the continuous support for this story is always and forever appreciated!


	5. Pink

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** i'm super pleased that jai's turning out to be an acceptable character for you guys so far. she's not written as particularly hardcore or incredibly witty, but hopefully she still manages to be a great lady somehow hahaha _hopefully_

* * *

5\. PINK

* * *

Somehow, they wind up at Tsuna's house. They always wind up at Tsuna's house.

The cherry blossom season hits, which tints the wind with the faintest aroma of rosy peaches and rainwater. Jai can see the pink masses of the nearby trees through the window glass. They've borrowed Bianchi's room for a while, where the crinkles of the sheets leave near-black shadows and the light of the sky makes the walls look a little bit blue.

Like literally every other mafioso she's ever met, Colonnello watches her with one figurative finger on the trigger of his rifle. It's beginning to seem like a normal reaction. "You've grown careless, Reborn," he says.

"No, I haven't. You've just gotten too slow to figure things out yourself."

"I still think you should've interrogated her the hard way by now." The Rain shakes his head and jabs a finger at her. "Well, whatever. Jai, right? I'm interested in what you've been showing those guys, so do you think you can teach me, kora?"

Jai digests the words. She likes this guy, Colonnello. It's like he seems to belong with his own personality. Some people have that feeling. "Hey, sure! I don't teach, though. I'm just your stepping stone. The learning part of it is up to you."

He frowns. "Up to me, huh?"

"It's always up to you," she says as she takes his hand.

He learns quickly. Quicker than Reborn and Fon, and even herself. Handling other Flames comes easy to him. "This is pretty neat," he comments as the sunshine makes his face seem round and full. "Pretty simple, isn't it?"

Reborn looks a few seconds away from snapping his neck. "Ooh," Skull breathes, sitting on the windowsill.

Jai laughs. She's proud, for some reason or another. "Hey, nicely done! Ready to give it back, then?"

Colonnello jerks a little, the same way Fon did when she told him to return the Flame. "Give it back?"

"It'll be fine," she assures him.

And she's right – it does turn out fine, but it's a struggle for him compared to the others. It's so much more difficult for him to give the Flame back. She wonders why.

Jai tells him to let go. Cut the connections. Tear it away, no matter how much he might not want to.

But at first, Colonnello won't. The Sun Flame in his hand dances wildly in place, and the Rain Flames deep inside him are pounding a rhythm even harder than the spring showers she found Takeshi in. "Let go," she says, her own Flames patiently pressing against his.

He shakes his head and bites his lip. "I can't."

The giving is harder than the taking. She knows that. Putting your Flames – your pieces of life – in someone else's hand means snapping the ties, breaking yourself apart. It doesn't hurt. It isn't painful. It's just hard.

It's so, so hard.

But life has its wars, and wars are won through battles. Jai thinks that's a good lesson to learn.

"You can," Jai says. "You can, you see? This is what you have to do." She presses her fingers against the backs of his. "It's time to let go now."

Finally, Colonnello shoves the Flame into her hands. Jai accepts it.

He wrenches away, almost slipping on the bed sheets. His breathing is harsh. Ragged. "Oh, _merda."_

Jai grins at him, feeling even prouder. The success always feels better after you fight for it. "Good work! A bit more practice and you'll have that nailed down."

The other babies watch on, undisguised curiosity spilling off of them. "Was it truly that hard for you?" Fon asks, hopping up next to Skull.

The Rain glares up at him for a half-second before his gaze scrambles back to other random pinpoints around the room. "It wasn't for you?"

She laughs. "Everyone takes it differently, actually. No need to feel bad about it." The Sun Flame in her palm dwindles away into nothing. "Thanks, Colonnello. For returning this."

He clears his throat. "Yeah. Sure. Whatever, kora." His eyes rise up to hers. "Is that what you felt when you gave your Flames to me? That's…You have to do the same thing?"

"I do."

Utter incredulity. _"How?"_

"The first time's always rough, but you'll get better at it. People always do." Idly, she notices how he scrapes the edge of his thumbnail across the tips of his other nails, over and over and over. "Giving your Flames away like that—it makes you _feel_, doesn't it?"

Whenever Jai does it, she feels. It reminds her she's alive. She's real.

Colonnello opens his mouth. Stops. Thinks about it.

She leans back until her head rests against the pillows. Fon and Skull peer down at her. Their heads look the same size as the lights embedded in the ceiling.

"So," she says, and waggles her fingers at Skull one by one. "Your turn?"

* * *

Out of the four, Skull has the weakest link with his Flames. He spends the longest time perfecting the tricks she shows him, and it's _always_ harder for him. It's only through sheer stubbornness that he manages to keep the gap between him and the others relatively small.

Jai watches him stamp his feet and fight through his obstacles and conquer their lessons inch by inch. Her respect for him is literally boundless.

"I don't even know why I bother," he sulks at some point as she shows him how to leave paths of fire in the air and letting them linger. His Cloud Flames splutter in his hands. Weakly. Dejected.

"But you _do_," Jai says, guiding his arm forward. "Listen, your Flames won't fade if you keep the connection firm. You have to maintain it, like the air's an extension of yourself." With her free hand, she catches the frothing ball of Rain thrown in her direction and tosses it over her shoulder to the tree branches, where Reborn is sitting.

After a while, Skull manages to paint a wobbly violet line in the air. It shimmers, it's faint, but it stays.

He lets out a long breath. Even with the helmet on, Jai can sense his smile curling. That quiet, sincere satisfaction lasts for a few seconds before he leaps up and exclaims, "Ha! I knew I could do it! Something as easy as that would never—"

A comet of Rain Flames splash across the back of his helmet. "Quit boasting," Colonnello calls.

"You're too slow," Reborn adds. "You're a disgrace."

"H-Hey!"

Jai laughs, stretches against the tickling grass, digs her toes into the still-moist dirt of the lawn. "You guys're playing catch, not war! You're supposed to keep the ball going!" She makes a sun in the palm of her hand. "New round?"

"Yes, over here."

The sun goes flying into Fon's hands. The Storm passes it to Reborn, who hurls it at Colonnello at a speed that hurts her eyes.

Colonnello leaps up and catches it, a smirk on his face for the entire universe to see. There's a fine thread of aggressiveness stretching between him and the Sun. Jai finds their rivalry entertaining. It's like watching a movie.

"I can't wait 'till you guys get to True Fire," she tells them. She's excited. Eager.

"You've mentioned that before," Fon says as the ball gets passed back to him. "What is it?"

"True Fire?" Reborn echoes.

With a laugh, she rolls onto her back. The sun feels warm. Soothing. "Nope, not telling you what that one is!"

"What's up with that?" Colonnello grumbles, catching another ridiculous throw.

"True Fire isn't something I can explain. That's cheating. You have to figure it out on your own." Jai shakes her head as a fluttery little insect lands on the bump of her chin. "Hey, is there anything in particular you guys—"

Something taps against the porch.

"—want to learn next?" she finishes as she sits up fast enough to make her head spin.

There's nothing there, and yet—

There's something not quite right about that space between the third and second step of the porch stairs. Specifically, the space next to the right railing. There's just something different about it. Like there's something there and not there at the same time.

"Jai? What's up?"

It's weird, but Jai knows what this feeling is. She's felt it before.

"There's a Mist over there," she says, pointing at the spot.

In a flash, Reborn's gun is out and his finger closing around the trigger. The Sun ball drops to the ground and melts into the grass.

Mist Flames burst out of the little space in a swirl of hazy light. The first thing she sees is the flapping purple cloak, and then the lavender hair, and the dragon-eyed frog sitting on top of it. "Put that thing away," the infant says scathingly. "You've gotten careless, Reborn."

A heartbeat of silence.

_"Viper?"_ Fon asks, hopping down from the tree.

"You're _alive?!"_ Skull splutters.

That's the best reaction Jai's ever heard in her life.

The indigo pacifier thumps against Viper's chest. The Flames are clouded. Hidden. Appropriate for a Mist. "What is the meaning of this?" she (he?) asks, eyes slicing through their faces.

Well, Jai thinks, there's one more to the set. Five out of seven.

Reborn lowers his gun. "What are you doing here? And why show up now, and here, of all places?"

"My work in Namimori has nothing to do with you, or the Vongola brat, or anything of the sort." Viper's gaze lands on her and stays. "I haven't received any kind of missive. Verde and Aria aren't here, either. Don't tell me the only reason you're all here is because of this woman's teachings."

Colonnello scowls. "What're you talking about, kora? Unless—" He shakes his head. "What, you think there's some sort of Arcobaleno event going on around here?"

_Arcobaleno_. Rainbow.

It suits them, somehow.

Viper gives a small sniff. "Normally, that would be the only time when all four of you would gather together willingly." The voice is monotonous. High-pitched. She has no idea whether they're talking to a guy or a girl. Literally everything about him (her?!) looks and sounds androgynous.

"This has nothing to do with the Arcobaleno," Fon states. "Viper, where on earth have you been? We received word you were missing."

"That's not your business."

Jai crosses her legs and squints at the newcomer. "Viper, right? I'm Jai! Sorry, but what do people call you? He or she?"

Viper's mouth pinches upward. "Not your business, woman. How did you know I was there?"

Judging by the way he says 'woman', Jai's going to go out on a limb and guess _male_. For now, anyway.

"I'm hyper-sensitive to Flames. You'd have better luck hiding behind a bush normally than using Flames to disguise yourself—around me, at least." She shrugs and rolls her head around her neck, enjoying the cracks and pops in her muscles. "You here for lessons too, then? 'Cause that's why these guys are here."

The Mist studies her for a long, hard moment. Then, he turns to the others. "How much are you paying her?"

Colonnello frowns. "Hey, what? We're not paying her anything, kora!"

Viper taps their chin with a black hand. That tiny mouth twists with something like repulsion. "She's teaching you for _free?"_

The word teaching always seems to suggest some kind of profession, which isn't accurate at all. Jai grins at them. "That's right! So what're you here for?"

Viper's inky red eyes bore into hers. He hops down the porch steps and onto the grass with pointy, dagger-like legs. The Mist Flames in the pacifier are only vague, eerie shapes orbiting the center of a sphere, and they remind Jai of velvety funeral shrouds.

The Mist stops a few feet away from her, looks her up and down, and nods once. Coldly. Curtly.

"Show me," he orders.

* * *

Takeshi's birthday is on the 24th of April. Jai doesn't forget it, not for an instant.

She just doesn't know what kind of present to get him.

Books are pointless because Takeshi, unlike his dad, doesn't like to read. He loves baseball, which leads her to visit a sports store, but the only things they have are bats with weirdly-shaped grips and stacks of mitts from different brand names even though they all look the same. It's not like he needs new equipment or anything.

She knows what Takeshi likes. His friends. Baseball. The color blue. Simple, precious things in life. Which is why she doesn't want to buy some random thing at a random store. That would be too shallow. Too materialistic.

His gift needs to be important. Birthday gifts are always important.

So, without any other viable options, Jai goes out for a stroll on the same trail she and Fuuta once walked. She follows the imprints of the deer and finds herself a massive, magnificent cedar tree. Wider than the straightness of her arms, tall enough to breathe in the clouds. The life running in the lines of the bark is old. Ancient.

This tree is marvelous. It's an honor to even be standing in front of it.

Jai rolls her sleeves up past her elbows and climbs. Higher, higher, higher, until she finds a thick, stubby branch jutting out from the left side. The diameter of it is no bigger than the size of her open hand. It's perfect.

"Really, really sorry about this," she mutters as Flames flare in her hand, tightening tendons and squeezing bones. A single chop, and the branch falls to the ground with an echoing thud in the forest quiet.

She breaks it in half and carries a part of it home.

"Jai, what on _earth?"_ Tsuyoshi asks as she strides into his shop with a giant wooden weight against her shoulder.

Jai wipes a bit of dirt off her cheek. "Hey, Tsuyoshi! Do you have a knife?"

Slowly, he takes out a sharp blade from the lower drawers and slides it across the counter. It's one of the larger knives he uses. Good for cutting up the salmon and tuna into smaller pieces. The blade is shaped like a long rectangle.

It's a kitchen knife, not a carving one. Not even close.

"Good enough," she says, and takes it.

Her apartment is almost entirely empty, which leaves plenty of space on the floor for her to use. Jai doesn't care about the mess she'll make. Sunlight curls around the kitchen knife as she buries it into the wood. Chips and slivers fly.

Sculpture work is hard. It doesn't help that this particular craft needs to be small enough to fit neatly in her palm, along with all the details. Jai works under soft, flowing moonlight and the snapshots of daytime she can spare, fluttering her fingers against the cedar grain where it curves and swells.

Colonnello hunts her down one day, popping in through the open window. "You're apartment is surprisingly empty, kora. Don't you keep anything around?"

She appreciates the visit, but right now, she's busy. "Not really. Did you need something?"

He gives her scratched-up fingers a considering glance. "Was wondering if you were free today. Guess not, though. What're you making?"

"Takeshi's birthday present, since that's coming up this month. Don't tell him, alright?"

"Oh. Got it. No problem, kora."

Out of sheer necessity, Jai shatters the kitchen knife into smaller parts. They're easier to work with. She carves the wood away until the layer is just as thin as the skin of her eyelids, and some pieces are smaller than the dust gathering in the corners of the room. Her Flames gnaw away beneath her fingers.

Suddenly, she's the busiest she's ever been this past year.

This needs to be right. It needs to be _perfect._

"Jai, aren't you late for your job?"

"Jai, how long have you been sitting in the same position like that?"

"Jai, what's the needle for? It's—Wait, are you telling me that used to be a part of that knife?! It's too damn slim!"

"Jai, weren't you going to help Viper with the coherence thing? He's—uh, she's—I mean, th-they're not letting up about it."

"Jai, I'm not going to the hardware store for you. Get up and go there yourself."

"Jai, can I see it?"

"Jai, your floor's a wreck. Shouldn't you throw out the wood chips or something, kora?"

"Jai, come on! Now Viper's pestering _Reborn-senpai_ to help them with their Flames, and there's no way that's going to end well!"

"Jai, the lock on your window is broken."

"Jai, Takesushi has caught on fire. Yes, see—you _are_ paying attention."

"Those other babies are bored out of their minds. You haven't finished showing me what they've learned so far. When are you going to be free?"

"Jai, I think you're late for work again."

"Jai, this entire room smells like cedar oil."

"Tsuyoshi mentioned that he wonders what happened to the knife he gave you about a week ago. You didn't tell him yet?"

"Jai, when do you think you'll be done?"

"Jai. Oh, wow. Jai, that's _good_."

She grins from ear to ear as Colonnello inspects her work, her finished masterpiece, flipping it around in his hands. She's missed this feeling of accomplishment. "Think he'll like it?"

He whistles. "Definitely. This's impressive stuff, kora." His bright eyes glitter in awe, and it pleases her. It's flattering. "If I were a lesser man, I'd be jealous of the kid! That light coming from inside is your Sun Flame, am I right?"

"Yep! You know how to do that too, right? Containing your Flames like that?"

He shrugs. "Dunno. Never tried it, kora."

"Oh. We can practice that next, then."

His answering smile is viciously satisfied. "Yeah? Not bad."

And then Takeshi's birthday rolls around.

Predictably, he holds the party at his home-turned-restaurant. Only his close friends are invited, his Sky and the Guardians assembled. Certain people squeeze in anyway. Like Reborn and the rest of the infants, and Gokudera's and Sasagawa's sisters, and Haru.

The food is delicious. Best sushi she's ever tasted. She might start tearing up because of it. "Why don't you put this stuff on the menu?" she asks Tsuyoshi between bites.

He jabs his fork in her direction. "It takes too long to make, and this is a special occasion. Could you please not talk with your mouth stuffed like that?"

"Takeshi's doing the same thing. You're not gonna scold him too?"

"He's at the other end of the table."

She frowns and rears back. "Go yell at him, then!"

"I'm not going to yell at him across the table."

"You're a big softie, you know that?"

Tsuyoshi huffs with laughter and doesn't reply, so Jai leans back in her seat and follows his gaze all the way to his son. She shakes her head. It never ceases to amaze her, how that boy can be so happy and full. So complete.

The sea inside him is beautiful. How is it possible for someone to be like that? There isn't a single person in this whole wide world who can compare themselves with him, is there?

Jai can only wonder, and it takes her breath away.

In the end, Takeshi is happy. Reborn forces his friends to put on a show. It cracks her up so bad that she has to keel over against the corner of the bar with Fon patting helplessly against her back.

Tsuna gets his Rain a new journal and drawing set (since, apparently, Takeshi sketches in his school planner). Gokudera and Bianchi give him chocolate, although half of it is poisoned and there's no telling the difference between the safe-to-eat and the not-so-safe-to-eat. The gifts go on and on.

Jai is one of the last. She corners him next to the table, tugs her present out of her pocket, and drops it into his hands.

Takeshi blinks down at it. "Jai?"

"I don't actually know if necklaces and stuff are your thing," she admits, a little nervous and a little proud, "but I guess it's the totem that matters. What do you think?"

He holds it close to his face. "Did…Did you make this?"

"Yeah. Like it?"

It's a simple thing, the pendant. The string is a plain leather strip tied from the craft store, and the figurine – a dragon, because Takeshi's once mentioned that he wishes dragons were real – is just cedar wood dipped in resin.

The dragon is coiled around a thin wooden sphere, which doesn't look like much until you notice how the surface of it grows thicker and wavier in some parts and not as much in others. That way, it looks like the surface is made of water. A flowing sort of texture.

And a little piece of her Sun Flames, no bigger than the fire of a candle, makes the whole thing glow from the inside out. Jai was actually inspired by Kay's Flames. Like light and water, she remembers.

Takeshi runs his fingers along the dragon's mane, its mouth, its tail. He feels along the texture of the scales and the wavy lines along the orb trapping her Flames in. She swears his eyes are bigger than dinner plates.

She rubs the back of her head before she can catch herself. This kid's habits are really carrying over.

"I've told you before that I had a sister, Aiva," she starts to say, since an explanation feels due. "See, every time there was a birthday, she'd make these wooden charms for us. Pendants for guys, bracelets for girls. That was her tradition, I guess. We loved her presents the most, because she was the absolute best at carving these things, and she put all these details in her animals that nobody else could even—_imagine."_

Quickly, Jai spares a glance at the others. She's gotten their undivided attention somewhere along the line. Takeshi still hasn't spoken a word. It's unnerving.

"Anyway—each one had a part that was hollowed out, and that was where she always put a little bit of her Lightning Flames inside. Just enough to make it turn a bit green. And Aiva—she said it's like giving pieces of herself to the people she loves, because she found it so easy to love us." She laughs at the memory of Aiva's black-brown eyes and too-short lashes. "Aiva always put just enough of her Flames inside each of her presents that the fire would last the whole year, so that the next time our birthdays came around, she could give us a new one. It was pretty convenient. So…"

Takeshi trails his fingers over the figurine. She knows he's listening, but still—no response. Tsuyoshi isn't offering her much help, either. That useless man.

"So I asked her to teach me how to make them, one day," she continues. "Mine obviously isn't as good as hers were, and that Flame probably won't last as nearly as long as a year, but—well, I couldn't think of anything else to give you! And it's a good tradition, in my opinion, so I just went with it, and—"

Jai gives in and taps the Rain's wrist. He shouldn't do silence. It's not for him. "Hey! Takeshi, come on! Say something!"

He looks up at her. Joyfully. So, so joyfully that her own Flames leap to the sky at the sight. "I don't…I don't have the…the _words_."

Relief crashes down on her like a tidal wave. Funny. She doesn't remember feeling afraid.

Takeshi presses two of his fingers against the light little orb, feeling the pulsing warmth inside. His entire face is moving and it's dazzling to watch. "It's like it's alive! I mean—the dragon, it looks real! This is—This is _amazing_! How long did this take?"

"Two weeks," Reborn supplies. "She worked through the nights, too."

"She literally did nothing else," Viper says, his nose turned upward.

Jai sighs. Nobody asked _them_. "It was top priority at the ti—"

Takeshi hugs her.

She hugs him back, presses her arm right below his shoulder blades and soaks in the encompassing warmth of a grand sea. A wonderful spirit. "You're welcome," she manages to say. "Glad you like it."

His laugh carries his entire body. "'Course I do," he replies, his words muffled.

"Should've gotten you milk instead. You're so short I could step on you."

Takeshi snickers—obviously in denial—and pulls away to slip the pendant over his head. Jai's smoothed down the dragon's left side so it doesn't bite into his skin or his clothes. He lets it hang in front of his shirt right next to his heart.

Jai exhales, and her Flames soar to the stars and sing.

Somehow, the party ends. The day starts closing in on itself, like all days do. _Time_ is the only thing that really shocks her these days.

As the restaurant empties out of people and nighttime scatters shining metals in the dark, Jai and Tsuyoshi take up seats at the bar long after Takeshi goes to bed. They share a bottle of his finest sake. It's an excellent brew.

"You're staying here tonight," he says as he refills his cup. "No buts. Guest room's always free."

She tilts her own cup forward. "Obviously. No way am I walking home in the dark after drinking this!"

He chuckles. His gaze seems to rest on the cat-framed clock at the top of the wall. "Takeshi's a good kid," he comments after a minute or two ticks past.

Jai closes her eyes. "A great one."

A laugh. "He is. I couldn't have asked for a better son." His chair creaks as he shifts a little. "He's grateful to have you."

She knows. "I'm pretty grateful to have him, too," she replies, blinking back to the amber light and the rainbow refractions in the bottles on the shelves in front of them.

Tsuyoshi looks at her kindly. Knowingly. Of what, she isn't sure. "I've told you before, how Tsuna-kun managed to earn Takeshi's trust." He smiles, and the curve of his lips crinkles the corners of his eyes. This man's been aging with grace. "He stopped my son from jumping off the school roof."

"Committing suicide, I know."

"What do you think of it?"

Jai tilts her head. "It's hard to imagine."

"Why's that?"

"Because it's Takeshi, and he's not like that." She shakes her head, trying to grasp the concept of not wanting to live. It's never even crossed her mind before. There's so much left to do in life. It's unthinkable. "You'd think he'd be the last person to—"

"Want to kill himself, yes." A little smile. "Most people think that way." Tsuyoshi pauses to take a sip. "He was…very lonely, after Akemi died. His mother."

The air changes.

They've never breached this subject before. Not ever.

"Your wife," Jai says.

His fingers close tightly around the edge of the counter. "Yes, my wife. She was…murdered. Because I…couldn't keep my reputation close enough." He clears his throat. "It happened while Takeshi was still in elementary school. He's never asked for details, but he doesn't need to. He knows…_enough_, about why his mother left."

She downs the rest of her drink. Her throat burns.

Akemi. The true owner of that shamisen. The person who used to sleep in that vacant guest room of theirs.

Jai wishes she could have met her.

"He was lonely. Even from his friends, he felt…isolated, in a way very few people could understand. So it's understandable—it's understandable that, once upon a time, he might have thought killing himself wasn't such a horrible idea."

Takeshi knows the mafia isn't a game. He probably knows that better than her.

She frowns at him. The man sitting next to her has gone off somewhere distant, and she doesn't like it. "It's not like that anymore."

That draws him back to the present. "No, of course not. Takeshi's happy now, and you have no idea how relieved I am for that." Tsuyoshi clasps her shoulder with a firm hand. "It's partly thanks to you."

"No, Tsuna was the one who—"

"You're important to him. Don't deny it."

She takes her hand in his and sets them both back on top of the counter. "It doesn't feel like I've done a big deal," she tells him. "I was never trying to fix his problems. I just wanted to know him, and maybe grow on him, like a fungus or something. It's not something special, what I've done."

Tsuyoshi's eyebrows rise. Fondly. "You've done a great deal, Jai. You filled the hole Akemi left behind."

Immediately, Jai reaches for the sake. "What? No! I've _never_ thought of myself as a mother!"

"No, and you certainly don't act like one. Hence why that metaphorical hole is looking a bit…crude." He lifts his hands in the air, signing his surrender before she can pretend to pour the bottle all over him. "But you've become someone precious to him, Jai. A friend. I'd…like to thank you for that."

She thinks she should be the one thanking him.

Admiration blossoms as a warmth in her chest. "You're a brave man," she says, and smiles despite herself. "We make a good team, don't we? For him."

"We do," Tsuyoshi replies. His smile flickers out before hers. "You're happy, Jai. And there's something about you that makes you stand out in the world." He gazes at her, like he thinks he might find that 'something' hidden somewhere in the crevices of her face. "Why are you alone?"

Jai was just about to drink. She puts her cup back down.

"The way you talk about your sister, Aiva, makes it obvious that she's dead. You mention your friends in past tense. You arrived in Namimori alone. Nobody ever calls you—"

"I don't even have a cellphone."

"—or even tries to contact you, from what I've seen." His expression is open as he searches her. "Reborn, Fon, Viper, Skull, and Colonnello are former members of the _I Prescelti Sette_. They're all renowned figures in the mafia, and the only reason they haven't forced you to share your past is because you make it hard for them to bring themselves to do it."

Jai laughs at how true those words ring. Her laughter isn't nice. Not this time.

(_I Prescelti Sette_. The 'Selected Seven'?)

She imagines picking a seashell off the beach and flinging it across the horizon, hard enough for the secret written in the spiral to disappear, plummeting past the edge of the world.

"I know what I'm doing," she tells him, even though that might be a lie. "Everything's going to be fine."

Too late to back out now, anyway. Might as well move forward.

Tsuyoshi eyes her for a moment longer. Then, he sighs, reaches for the bottle of sake, and grimaces as soon as he picks it up. "Half-empty already?"

Jai can't help but laugh.

She really is quite lucky, isn't she? One of the luckiest people in the world.

"What?" Tsuyoshi asks.

Her grin isn't whole-hearted, but it's almost there. "Half-full," she corrects him, and plucks the bottle out of his grasp.

* * *

The others can be busy, too. They're mafia. She forgets that sometimes.

Reborn and Skull are the only ones who can stay for an indefinite amount of time. Colonnello hops out of Namimori every couple of weeks or so to fulfill his duties in the CEDEF. Viper disappears at random, never staying with them for more than a few days. Even Fon is called back to the Chinese Triads a few times, and his periods of absence seem much longer in comparison.

But they all come back. They always do.

They're fascinated by their own Flames. Their potential. They've never thought about their Flames as something bigger than fancy light shows and killing intent.

They're curious, as expected. Everyone would be.

(She wouldn't call Flames an art. That would be pretentious. Flames hurt and burn and kill, but they can be _more_—more than a gruesome battle on a field of war, or charred bodies piling up.

Like how swords don't have to be for killing. They can be a dance. A passion.

Life is fire, and Flames can be kind.)

"What's it like, to be hyper-sensitive?" Viper asks her one day. They're sitting next to the window of her apartment, watching the swarming sidewalks and the traffic lights twinkling in the distance. Reborn's sitting at her feet, examining the pieces of a gun that isn't Leon. Viper's gloved fingers tap sequences against the sill (one two three one two four one two three).

Jai looks up from the tattered pages of the newspaper. Apparently, some kids over at Namimori High were attacked. Lots of teeth missing. All hospitalized. Big, bad news. She's thinking about dropping by Tsuna's house again for the first time in a while, just to see if they're doing alright in that area.

"It's pretty cool," she says as she focuses back on him.

He scowls at her. His red eyes are brilliant shocks in his face, like poppies in a field of water-lilies or something equally poetic. "Don't play games, woman. What do you see? What _can_ you see?" Something shifts in him – a new world of meaning.

She thinks about it.

Not much, actually.

Jai doesn't think her 'hyper-sensitivity' is as great as they think it is. But that isn't the answer Viper is looking for, so she gestures for his hand and says, "Show me your Flames for a sec."

"It'll cost you twenty yen."

She fishes a couple bronze coins out of her pocket and flips them into the air. He catches them.

He shows her his Flame. It wavers in his hands and trails off in neat little swirls. She brushes her Sun Flames against it, and it tucks itself away from her. Kind of like a sea anemone.

"Quit that," Viper barks.

Jai laughs. "Sorry! You don't like that?"

"No. It's…" The Mist's frown deepens. "You're intruding. On purpose."

Jai pulls her Flames back a little. "It's not a bad feeling, is it? Skull says he likes it."

"Skull is pathetic," Reborn says as he clicks the barrel of his gun back in place.

She squints at him. This guy's insults are automatic. "I'll never understand what you have against him."

He raises an elegant eyebrow. She's never going to learn to pull that off as well as he does. It's discouraging. "He's an embarrassment. I don't know what you see in him. Or in anyone, actually."

Viper's arm glances off her wrist. "Focus, woman."

"Right, right!" Jai plunges her hand into his Flames. Her skin—no, not her skin, something deeper inside her—shivers at the touch. Tingles. Like electricity except not, like chills except not.

Tiny, tiny vibrations.

Wow.

She curls her fingers a few times. "Your Flames are loud!"

"What?" Viper asks.

Reborn shifts somewhere out of her line of sight. "Loud?"

"Yeah! Viper's Flames are singing!" The fiery mist ghosts over her thumb. "All Flames make noise, but you can actually feel the sounds in this one. That's incredible!"

Viper studies her closely. "It's not a problem, then?"

"Nah, it's just different. Everyone's Flames are unique in some way." She ignites a Flame on her other hand for a few seconds. "According to my friends, my Flames like to spin around a lot. Like planets do on their axes. It's just natural, I guess." A grin blooms on her face. "Can you hear your Flames?"

He frowns at his hands. "No. Is that possible?"

"Want to try it? Hearing them?"

"You have to pay me—"

Reborn taps his gun against the floor. "Viper, she's supposed to be charging you, not the other way around."

The Mist frowns. Bitterly. So bitterly, in fact, she thinks he might have swallowed a fly in the time it took her to blink. "…Fine."

Mysterious.

Or maybe not. It's no secret that Viper loves getting paid. Hoarding money is one of his things, in the same way tapping his fingers in patterns against surfaces is also one of his things (in the same way Reborn twitches with a ferocious sense of second-hand embarrassment whenever someone lays down a pun, and Fon tends to breathe out more through his stomach than his chest because it circulates his chi, and Colonnello constantly fiddles with his fingernails and callouses from sniper rifles, and Skull has a habit of purposely blinking his eyes hard enough to make moisture cling to his tiny eyelashes).

Jai doesn't like Viper. Viper's greed. But she won't tell him that.

"We have to cohere first," she says.

He nods and accepts her offering hand. Their Flames spark against each other, clashing with two different wills, two different minds, two different lives—

Hello, she thinks. Her Sun Flames entwine itself with his Mist ones, flowering in wonderful indigo and dulcet yellow, rainbow stars waltzing around the edges. It's beautiful. Jai can feel a layer sliding over her heart, pounding in the same rhythm and beat and tempo and time. Viper's heartbeat.

She can feel his Mist Flames overlapping hers, his pulse running along the ley lines in her body called arteries and veins.

Unity. Oneness. Coherence.

"Now what?" Viper asks.

Jai hushes him and reaches down, deep down into his life force. She can hear a song somewhere in there. It's like taking a step forward in a sea of mist. Without a compass. Walking toward the voice hovering just beyond the cover. "I'm going to try to let us hear your vibrations. For now, you can just cooperate and let me dig around a little."

He dives into his core alongside her. "Don't say 'dig' like you're not exploring _my_ Wave Energy."

Sparks shower over their hands. She laughs, even as she encourages his Flames to sing louder. Loud and clear, but only long enough for them to hear it. "Well, here, I think I'm getting it! Can you hear it yet?"

"No. If you don't try harder, it'll cost you."

Jai coaxes the tune out a little further.

The melody is happy. Kind of slow, like a lullaby. Charming in its own way. Flames don't have voices, but the pitch is definitely different than his. More feminine. "What about now?"

Five seconds tick past.

She looks up at Viper's stunned expression. "Viper? Do you hear it?"

His mouth parts. The fingers tapping against the sill do a small, weird spasm. _"Pioggia?"_

_Pioggia_. Italian. Means 'rain'.

That came out of nowhere.

"What?" Reborn beats her to the question.

"_Pioggia_, it's—" A frustrated noise escapes Viper's lips. "A song I know! I've heard—I used to—" He squeezes Jai's hand. She swears that'll leave a bruise. "Why are _my Flames_ singing _that_ damned song?!"

Jai notices the wild glint in his eyes. There's shock there. Panic, which she's familiar with. The rest of it is a whirlwind she can't even begin to understand. "Your Flames are naturally loud. As for what kinds of songs they like to sing, I have no idea what to tell you. They're not my Flames."

Viper shifts his jaw around. He looks a bit pained. Pressured. "It's a stupid tune," he bites out. "This is…absurd. Why would my Flames even remember—such a stupid thing—"

Their intertwined heartbeat begins to rise. She ignores it for now.

If Viper really didn't want to hear this song, this lullaby about rain, his Flames wouldn't be singing it in the first place. But that isn't what he wants to hear, so she releases the coherence between them and says something exponentially _worse_ in comparison, which goes like this: "I can show you how to listen to your Flames, if you want. It'll be hard work on your part, but it's possible."

He goes still. For a moment, Jai thinks he might get angry. Stand up. Yell at her.

Then, the fury dies away. Viper stares at her for a long, long time, before tipping his head back with a laugh. It's the first time she's ever heard it.

Too bitter, in her opinion.

His gleaming red eyes swiveling over to Reborn. "Can you imagine the massive field day Verde will have if he ever gets his hands on her?"

Verde. Means 'green' in multiple languages. They've mentioned him before, but never in positive contexts.

The hitman smirks. Unreadably. "He won't."

"Won't what?"

"Get the chance. Besides, even if he did worm his way in, nobody would stand for his schemes. Not even you."

The Mist hums and tilts his chin up. "Typical." He glances at Jai. "You're annoying, woman. Show me whatever you know, so long as it's free. I don't really care."

She doubts he means any of that, but this is the game that they play. The mafia game. "Sure," she says.

He hops onto the sill and disappears with one of his handy Mist techniques. His departures are always abrupt.

"What was that about?" Jai asks Reborn after he leaves. "And who's Verde?"

Reborn shakes his head. "You don't want to know."

She doesn't get it.

A breeze wafts through the window, and her eyes catch the movement of the flapping parchment of the nearby newspaper, and the bold lettering of a blaring headline on the front.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** in the previous chapter's notes i said chapter 5 would be the start of mukuro's arc. hahahahaHAHAHA i lied, viper jumped in and wouldn't leave (viper's my favorite out of the arcobaleno ,by the way, look at me and my favoritism), and then takeshi's birthday came up and i couldn't just let that pass by without writing about it. so mukuro's arc will start immediately with chapter 6. as will the conflict. and more character development for jai, which is desperately needed. woohoo!

also, yes, viper's probably male, or at least jai will refer to him as such. and he shows up without his hood (meaning people can see his face).

anyway, my inspiration for faux is on a roll. thanks for the favorites, follows, and reviews! really appreciate it!


	6. Grey

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** get ready for the coaster ride! also i realize i should've said something in the previous chapter's notes, so here's to clear up any lingering confusion—viper shows up without his hood and using his real name for a legit reason that will not be explicitly stated until later in the story! (you can probably figure it out, though) anyway this chapter was really hard to pull through, hope you enjoy!

* * *

6\. GREY

* * *

Fuuta is missing.

He disappeared three days ago. Nobody told her.

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks, standing behind the kitchen island. The trees outside are silent. The other rooms are silent. This entire house is silent.

The kitchen is lighted only by the window, shaded blue and highlighted in gold. It's become such a quiet place, almost enough to hear the trickle of blood in her veins and her heartbeat thumping in her ears.

Reborn adjusts his fedora. "What would you have done? It's too late. He's already gone."

Jai places one hand on top of the counter. "Fuuta is _missing!"_

"I'm aware."

He's planning something. She doesn't like it already. "Do you know where he is?"

The hitman observes her through pitch-black lenses. Leon curls around his wrist. Fon and Colonnello sit beneath the cabinets next to the windows, and she can't even hear them breathe.

He doesn't respond, which is basically an answer in itself. Reborn knows where Fuuta is. Of course he does. He's the world's greatest hitman.

"He's not in danger for now," Reborn says at last. "He's being held hostage by the same people who've been attacking the schools in Namimori."

Jai's nails bite into the countertop. "Why?"

"His ranking abilities. Why else?"

"No, not that! You're planning something, obviously, but why in all the stars does it have to involve Fuuta being kidnapped and held hostage—"

"I didn't plan for this to happen. Fuuta's current situation is partly because I didn't keep a good eye on him, but right now, it's best if he stays where he is."

"Best if he stays—" Oh, he can't be serious. "These guys are beating people up and pulling out their teeth, and you're telling me—"

"Jai," Fon says. She stops.

Reborn stands up, and he tells her. Tells her about his suspicions on possible culprits. About a group of criminals that escaped some dark prison in eternal winter. About how their target is most likely the Vongola Decimo. About Dino's contacts who have more information, and about Viper's knowledge on the entire situation—except the Mist's prices are set so high that none of them are even bothering to demand answers from him.

She listens, really listens to him, but none of it seems to matter.

"They won't hurt Fuuta for now. The Ranking Prince is too valuable a hostage." The hitman's voice is hard. Not cold, but not warm. Like a pebble hitting the back of her head. "Like I said, it's best if he stays where he is."

Jai frowns. "Why can't you take him back? You're strong enough."

"As things are now, our enemy's movements are still predictable enough. If I make myself look like a threat, I'll become an obvious target, and they'll probably change their current action to deal with me."

Which shouldn't be a problem. Reborn's strong, and he's a hitman. He has the capability of killing them all. But he hasn't, which means he's…doing something.

He wants them to carry out their own crimes. He's drawing out the battle. She's missing a key piece here. An important puzzle piece.

It clicks. Snaps together. Oh.

Reborn smirks, long and slow. "Exactly. This is Tsuna's trial, not mine. I'm going to see if he's fit to be my student or not."

He knows what he's doing. He's up against unknown enemies of questionable caliber and he knows, almost step by step, exactly how his plan will work. A true professional.

"You don't have to involve Fuuta," she points out. "He doesn't know about any of this, does he? You don't have to hurt him. He's not a pawn."

The smirk drops. "No, he's not. But he's not in any danger right now, and Tsuna will be in a good position to save him. Don't doubt him, Jai."

Jai doesn't doubt Tsuna. She doubts Reborn's reassurances that Fuuta will be safe. That boy's Flames are small. Fluttery. If he were here, she could close her hands around it and smash it into golden bits and pieces, as easy as crushing a butterfly.

Anyone could do the same. The thought chokes up her throat.

"Are you angry?" Reborn asks.

"No." Which is true. Jai isn't angry. Anxious, maybe. "But I don't like it, alright?"

His dark gaze bores into her. "Everything will be taken care of, Jai. Don't worry about it."

She knows. But Fuuta is a lost spark floating away from a fire. Fuuta is a fragile glass at the brink of a precipice. Fuuta is the Flameless boy, and while he might have galaxies in his eyes, he's still so incredibly _worn._

Jai trusts Reborn. Reborn, who can't see Fuuta's Flames. Reborn, who doesn't know.

She nods, says something affirmative—like _I understand _or _okay, got it_. She's not even sure.

The house is still quiet when she leaves.

* * *

It isn't hard to trace the attacks back to their source. The witnesses in the newspaper mentioned Kokuyo. She takes that, and the reports of the people in the apartments who hear animal sounds coming from a certain direction, and puts it all together. Kokuyo Land. That's another puzzle solved.

Kokuyo Land is an absolute mess. There are bits of glass scattered all over the ground. Cracked walls and doors pressured shut. Mounds of dirt burying the buildings. Broken, broken and hollow. Even the air is sharp in her lungs.

Or maybe that's just because the air is cold. Still, the atmosphere of the place reminds her of a horror movie. Takeshi showed her one once. She hated it. And this place is the perfect setup for one of those kinds of films—an abandoned amusement park, where laughter exists as a ghostly sort of thing.

She takes her first step through the gates.

"Reborn won't appreciate you being here."

Jai's body jolts. Her own laughter sounds nervous. "Fon, don't _do_ that!"

The infant hops onto her shoulder from his hiding place in who-knows-where. He smiles at her. Mischievously. "Perhaps you should pay more attention to your surroundings."

"You're kidding me! I'm not an assassin!"

"Ah, well. My apologies." Fon pokes her cheek with a gentle touch. "Still, I don't believe Reborn wants you to interfere with his student's trial."

Jai shrugs her other shoulder. "So I thought about it, and I realized I'm not actually okay with Fuuta being in danger. I'll just steal him away and that'll be that. That's…not too much interference, is it?"

"Oh. I suppose it wouldn't make much of a difference in the long run. Tsuna's trial mainly focuses on the defeat of our new troublemakers, not the rescue of a hostage. That's what Reborn predicts, at least." A long, deliberate pause. "Even so, Jai."

"Fuuta's in danger!" She struggles for words. The right ones. "I'm not—_comfortable_ with letting him suffer in someone's hands when I can just go in there now and get him out! I can't just let him sit there! I mean, maybe he might run out of time, or something! Nobody knows!"

Fon brushes her cheek again. "I understand. I'm sure Reborn does, as well. But Jai, are you capable?"

Of sneaking in and out of places, or defeating someone at Tsuna's current level of training? Probably. "Yeah."

"The enemy shouldn't know your identity, seeing as you've been keeping a low profile. Therefore, it shouldn't be problematic for you, even if you do get caught in the middle of your rescue mission." Fon takes a deep breath, eyelashes fluttering. "I…will not stop you if you choose to continue. However, it would be best for you to exercise…a fair amount of caution around these parts."

Jai grins. It pulls her frosted lips apart. "You know, if you're so worried about me, you can always come along! Can't you?"

"Well, I'd rather not risk it. The situation would worsen if they caught sight of me, given my particular reputation." He slips off her shoulder and onto the ground. "I will wait for you here. Can you manage?"

She waggles her fingers at him. "Thanks, Fon!"

"Be careful," he says.

A flash of red robes. A gust of wind. Just like that, Fon is gone. Jai's rather impressed.

She turns back to the layout of the empty playground. There's literally nothing here that's still in good condition. There's no map, either.

Hide-and-seek it is.

Jai goes around to the left side, where bushy vines are creeping up the sides of the buildings. She finds a lot of things. Cool, interesting things.

Like a gigantic grey netting of wasps in one of the cracked doorways. Massive wasps. Buzzing everywhere. They scare her half to death.

Also, there's a rat's nest in the corner of the roof. She peers up at it, her feet snapping the debris on the ground of the lobby. Probably some sort of lobby. She has no idea what this floor used to be. Anyway, rats shouldn't be up there. There's no way they can get down. But those are definitely beady little rodent eyes glaring back at her, and that just doesn't make any sense.

In conclusion, this entire place is out of control.

And it's too eerie. If this is where the enemy supposedly is, then they should've spotted her by now. She's not trying to stand out, but it's not like she's hiding herself, either. The whole point is for them to approach her, so she can skip the hunt and get straight to interrogating one of them on Fuuta's whereabouts.

That plan isn't working so far.

Jai is in the middle of jumping out of a shattered window when she sees the paw prints. Large, dirty marks pressed into the path. They're big enough to be a bear's, but not shaped like a bear's. More like a tiger. Or a large wolf.

These paw prints are incredibly new.

She leans to the side a little. They travel all the way down the path and disappear behind a few overgrown bushes at the faraway corner.

Interesting. Intriguing.

Jai follows the marks. She tries to walk with the exaggerated attitude of a world explorer, but her foot catches on a long root and she scrapes her ankle. Failure is miserable.

The paw prints lead her all the way to a tunnel of sorts. It was probably the door to a maintenance hall at some point, but the gnarled trees have overtaken the cement walls and the door is completely missing. It's a big black hole smack in the middle of her line of sight.

This is straight out of that horror movie Takeshi made her watch.

(There was this little girl who found a hallway in her school that wasn't there before. That hallway led to a hole in some underground path, which was where all the monsters came out of, and where all the school kids were dragged off into. Like a really bad Mist illusion.)

In other words, it's an obvious trap. She doesn't even know what to do about it.

"I'm not going in there," she says, mostly to herself.

Fuuta could be in there. Maybe. Maybe not.

"Nah, definitely not going in there."

The tunnel seems to leer at her.

Then, the buzzing starts. Not wasp-buzzing, but energy-buzzing. Jai knows this feeling, the way it tingles against her skin. The strangest sensation. She's felt it before, when she took her first step into Sawada Tsunayoshi's household.

She enters the tunnel.

There's no blood on the floor, no corpses hanging from the ceiling. Only mold and darkness. Jai makes a Flame in her hand to shine sunlight through the hall.

The paw prints lead up three staircases. They stop in front of a pitch-black room. The end of the path.

Something is in there. _Someone_ is in there.

She extinguishes her Flame as she walks in.

The room is empty. A third of it is lit up by the faint blue glow of the windows. There's a giant leather couch facing away from those windows, and sitting on that giant leather couch—

Sitting on that giant leather couch is a silhouette of a person with too wide of a smile. A pure, powerful Mist. Like the haze of a completely blank world. Blinding. Maddening.

"Welcome," he purrs.

The aura here is suffocating. This isn't fun. This isn't an adventure. No, Jai's walked into the territory of an enormous Mist, an incredible threat—and that means war. Cold, bloody war, and possibly politics.

Jai keeps her voice nice and even. "Hi. Where's Fuuta?"

"Fuuta?" The Mist chuckles. "Why, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"Fuuta de la Stella. You have him. Give him back."

He leans forward, his face cloaked in a shadow's weave. "Oh?" A precise, scissoring laugh. "I'd expected better manners from a guest of mine. Is that why you're here? To retrieve this…Fuuta de la Stella, was it?"

Jai is talking to a boy, not a man, but he certainly seems otherwise. She's going to treat him otherwise. "Tell me where he is."

"You are impatient." A pause. "_Impudent_. I must admit, I didn't expect someone like you to greet me here. A civilian on the outside, something…more, perhaps, on the inside?" Lying laughter. "I wonder!"

"I'm a friend of Fuuta's." She steps closer. "Who were you expecting?"

"Oh, I don't know. The bloodthirsty prefect of our lovely Namimori, perhaps? Or…someone else entirely?" A fleeting glimpse of two fire-bleeding eyes. Feathery blue. Shriveling red. "But you—no, I'm afraid I didn't expect you. Fuuta's friend, you say? Well, I must have overlooked something."

An arm swipes through the air, gesturing at the length of the couch. "No matter—since you're such an interesting visitor of mine. And a guest, despite your treatment of your host thus far. So why don't you entertain me?"

Jai comes forward a little bit more, until the window-light illuminates her profile in full. "I don't care to entertain. I'm not here for a fight, but I'll fight for Fuuta. Is that what you want?"

Those burning eyes narrow. "To fight? Fight you?" He smiles again. The perfect picture of twisted innocence. "Of course not. No, no. How about this?" His words, she senses, are being placed with great care. "How about we play a game, you and I?"

A game.

"Chess, specifically," he carries on to say. "It's a popular game. International. Are you familiar with it?"

She doesn't bother with letting the silence stretch. "Why would we do that?"

"To wager."

Not a game. A _Mist's_ game. Anything else is for children.

"If you win this game of ours, I'll give you your Fuuta of the Stars. In fact, I'll hand him to you myself. On the other hand, if I win…well." Wide, wide smile. "Unpleasant consequences, you might say."

The wise decision would be to back down and fight. Force his cards physically. But Mists don't fight like that. Mists fight with their tongue and the gears whirring around in their heads. Mists fight with knives in the inflection of their voice and poison stirring in their breath.

And Jai can win. She has nothing to hide.

Her secrets are buried too deep for any sharp tongue to dig out. She wins her mind-wars by default. Even if this boy has no intention of bringing her to Fuuta, or of letting her leave this place, she can still win. She doesn't break so easily.

If she does win, she won't be messing with Tsuna's trial. And everything will work out.

"I know how to play," she says. To both games.

He inclines his head. One hand reaches out to grab the chess board that materializes from thin air. "Excellent. Have a seat, then."

Jai lets out a startled, genuine laugh. An easy trick. Faux pulled that on her a few times. "Oh, no, I won't fall for that!"

The chess board made of Mist Flames disappears. He reaches down, drags a real board and its boxes of pieces out from under the sofa, and smiles softly. "My _apologies_."

They sit on the floor. She crosses her legs, while he slips off his comfortable throne onto the rough wooden planks covered in splinters for spikes. "You may take white," he offers, with a demure twitch of his lips.

A porcelain face. Blooded eyes. A cruel mouth.

"Why not?" she says, setting up her pieces. None of them are fake. None of his are fake, either. There aren't any strings attached in this part, at least.

He smiles as she moves her knight forward. Like that's funny, somehow. Even though she actually has a strategy for this. "I don't suppose I'd be honored with the name of my opponent?"

Jai doesn't see why not. "It's Jai. Just Jai is fine. And you?"

"I'm afraid my own name is a bit of a secret." The Mist pushes his knight forward. A mirror of her own move. "So, Jai. Do you happen to know the meaning of your name?"

She pokes one of her pawns forward. "I do, yeah."

"Of Sanskrit origin. It means 'victorious'. Coincidental, isn't it?"

Sanskrit. Victorious.

Jai was always told that her name has a different meaning. It's from another old language, long lost to the world. It means 'warrior'.

"We'll have to see," she says as she watches the flickering in his unblinking eyes. "How good are you at chess, anyway?"

He chuckles. "We'll have to see." The pieces shift around on their checkered tiles. "You mentioned you're a friend of Fuuta's. I'm sure you've missed him dearly. Haven't you?"

She props her arm up on one knee. "Well…no, actually. I only just heard about his kidnapping this morning. I'd like him back, though."

"Oh? Don't his friends and family keep you informed?"

"Sure they do. And they just did, this morning." Jai drags her other knight into the battlefield. "Did you do anything to him?"

"To the boy? Oh, no. Hurting him would have been unnecessary. He's been very cooperative."

Meaning they haven't tortured him. Threatened him, certainly. She wonders if there's something more in that answer, something that can be found if she bothers to dissect the words.

The Mist taps his chin, gaze darting over the board. She looks up from the game and asks, "What do you have against his family, anyway?"

"Are you questioning my motives?"

"Guess so." She frowns at the pawn on the left side of the board. That's an odd placement. Definitely part of a set-up. "Everyone has their reasons. I can't figure out yours, though. Vongola Decimo's a great guy."

His voice has a musical lilt to it. "It's nothing personal. The Vongola is merely a step of a stair for the pathway I've drawn."

"What pathway?"

He gazes at her. So hatefully, so ambitiously that it almost makes her lean back. Almost. "The path that leads to the destruction of this pathetic world." And then…he smiles. A shy, sugary smile. "Starting with the mafia, of course."

Oh. Okay.

Jai moves her rook, mindful of his knight trapped in the corner. "Why would you start with the mafia, of all things? Most people think of the government."

"Nonsense. The governments of this world are certainly corrupt, but the mafia even more so. The mafia is a place where filth gathers and rots."

"A grudge?" she guesses.

A cold smirk, flitting across his face in the blink of an eye. "I'm not so petty. I'm simply doing this rotten world a favor."

"By destroying it." She takes his bishop. "Some favor, that."

"It seems you disagree with my views." He runs a finger across his bottom lip. "Tell me this, Jai. Do you not believe this world of humans is worthless?"

He sounds like Faux and Enten in their worst moments. "Why would it be?" she asks.

His words sound incredibly nonchalant in contrast to the subject at hand. "Human nature is selfish and thoughtless. It's best to just wipe them all out of existence entirely, in my humble opinion."

"Don't call them that."

"Pardon?"

"Humans. You talk about them like you're not one of them. They're people, same as us."

"Hardly. Humans are tools. Easily taken advantage of. To be used for our own purposes."

Jai feels her heart stutter. It's like she's talking to Faux. Faux, her best friend. That's exactly what Faux used to think, what he used to say, how he used to feel right up to the point where she fell asleep and never saw him again.

"People are great," she says firmly, "and they have hearts and feelings, they're not _tools_—"

"I wonder if you truly believe those flimsy words spewing out of your own mouth." The Mist catches her tower and twirls it in his fingers. "After all, we're quite alike, you and I."

She keeps her body still, still as a statue. "I…don't think so, actually."

"No? You have an incredible mind, to keep up with me thus far. And there are very, very few people who are comfortable to place the fate of their 'friend's life on a little game of chess."

She tilts her head a little. He's wrong. He's so wrong, he doesn't even know how wrong he is. "That's because I'd rather not fight—"

"He's not really your friend, is he? Fuuta of the Stars, that is." The Mist blinks rapidly, exaggerating the reaction for a startling revelation. "If you were his friend, you'd have heard about his disappearance much sooner. Wouldn't you? Meaning that you aren't here for his well-being—you're here because he's useful to you. Because of his ranking abilities."

"You're making assumptions—"

"No, I don't think I am. Fuuta's family doesn't mean much to you either, does it? Otherwise, I'm sure I would have noticed you by now." He bares his teeth at her—flashing white. Torturing. "I see _myself in you."_

Jai doesn't move as she stares at him. "You shouldn't. I know what you are."

He is a mirror. In another life, he is Faux. He is one of the purest Mists to ever exist, and an insulator of hate better than cotton is to heat.

He's also an obstacle to overcome. A challenge that Reborn is using to further Tsuna's growth and development. There's literally no way these people can win. Not with their power. Not with their arrogance. They're just being used. But Jai doesn't want to tell him that—how cruel would that be?

The Mist smiles saccharine. "A monster, I presume? I've been called that." He flicks a hand in her direction. "Your move."

A monster? No. This one hasn't seen a real monster. He hasn't even seen the worst the world has to offer.

"My move," she says, and slides her bishop to his right. "Checkmate."

That's one game won.

The Mist freezes in place, eyes darting back to the board. His forehead wrinkles. "Ah." His fingers topple his own king with a deafening clatter. "I see. A quick trap. That was your ploy, wasn't it?"

Jai gazes at him.

One of his sharp fingernails dig into the plastic crown of the fallen king. "I should have foreseen that. No matter. I suppose now is the time to prove my word true." He lifts his other hand toward the doorway. "Come in, Fuuta."

She twists herself around to see.

The boy standing in the frame, half-hidden by darkness, smiles at her. Angelic. "You came for me," he says rather cheerfully.

No. Oh, no.

Horror plunges an arm into her stomach. "What have you done?" she whispers.

The boy looks puzzled. "Jai-san? What are you talking about?"

This is not Fuuta. This boy has the same button nose and the little scratch next to his hairline, the same brown hair, the same stick-thin wrists and tiny bare feet, but he is not Fuuta. The Flames in him are a Mist's, the same as the one sitting in front of her. Big and magnificent, but not Fuuta's Flames.

Jai can't feel Fuuta's spark.

Is he still alive? Still in there, somewhere? She doesn't know. _She doesn't know._

Slowly, she turns back to the enemy. This is his finale, she realizes. This is why he didn't stretch out the mind game. He _won_ before the game even began. He _knew_ he won before the game even—

No, this game started before she even realized it. She _lost_ before she even—

"Impressive," says the boy in the doorway. He smirks, a look that's so entirely wrong on that gentle face. "Not many people can figure it out so quickly. What tipped you off, I wonder?"

They have the same eyes. One red, one blue. Starry-eyed Fuuta is gone.

Jai watches as the Mist in front of her brushes his bangs to the side, revealing a red-rimmed circle in the middle of his forehead. A bullet wound.

"You took his body." Her heartbeat pounds loud in her ears. "You stole it from him. Give it back."

He laughs. _"Make me!"_

Three black lines spin into place in his red eye. The room fills itself with dogs. Angry, feral, snarling beasts, jaws agape and hungry for her. Illusions. "My move," hisses the Mist in both bodies.

She's lost the game. It slipped from her fingers and fell in a pool at her feet. She can't get Fuuta back without fighting the Mist, and that means interfering with Tsuna's trial. Fuuta might not even be alive anymore.

Jai rises to her feet. She is tall, taller than him. She has yet to be broken. Like a cedar tree rising from the earth, like an old queen still magnificent—"You are everything I've tried to fear in life," she declares.

The dogs lunge forward.

They're rabid creatures, tearing up the floorboards, jaws snapping against her flesh—

Jai's skin is on fire. She is the essence of light, faster than flight, faster than sound. Her Flames flare out in a dazzling display of sunshine. Just before her eyes close, she sees both boys' red-blue eyes widen in surprise, in shock.

Jai spares a fraction of a second to regret.

She teleports.

When she opens her eyes again to the view of the Kokuyo Land gates, the dogs are out of sight. There are fine particles of glass, smaller than sand, clinging to the hairs on her arms. She burned a hole straight through the Mist's windows in her escape.

Her legs take her down the hill, scraping past tree branches and stumbling over tree roots. The howling of the highway echoes in her ears.

"—ai! Jai! Wait!"

She stalls in front of a steep slope overlooking the trails of cars in the distance. A few seconds later, Fon appears next to her feet. Reborn is close behind him.

"Jai," Fon says. He opens his mouth, but no words come out.

Jai knows they're studying her, facial expression and body language and all. "I'm sorry," she tells Reborn. "I should've trusted you more."

The hitman lowers his fedora. "It's…What did you do?"

"Nothing. I did nothing. It was…" She feels disappointed. Ever-so-slightly, and mainly with herself. "I couldn't get Fuuta. I didn't accomplish anything."

Fon leaps up onto her shoulder. "We can talk about this later. This isn't a safe place to converse. Let's return to Tsuna's house, shall we?"

Jai nods. Reborn takes his place on her other shoulder. They head down to the highway.

That Mist is wrong about everything. About herself. About the world. About humans. Jai just wishes she could show him. She wishes Fuuta's spark was still there. But wishes don't really do anything.

Defeat is _sour._

* * *

Then, there's the end.

Colonnello wants to watch Tsuna's trial because of his rivalry with Reborn. Skull wants to come along because he admires Reborn's power, no matter how many times he denies it. Fon joins their little bandwagon out of simple, pleasant curiosity, and Viper is dragged along and bribed to hide them all with his Flames.

Jai is invited to join them. So she goes back to Kokuyo Land again with two babies on her shoulder, another one in her arms, and a fourth one floating a meter or so away from them. The sky is a brilliant hue.

"Don't stir the ground when you walk," Viper orders them. "It's harder to maintain the illusion if I have to keep adding layers for each pebble you move. And if you're going to talk, talk quietly."

It feels like they're the camera men for a famous television show. Like a live audience.

They arrive late, in the end. Takeshi is already sprawled in a burnt-out clearing, slumped against a tree. His entire body is covered in black scrapes and bruises. The bandages around his good arm are sticky against her fingers.

What an idiot.

Jai heals his wounds in a hurry. Then, she turns to the man lying off to the side. He has needles sticking out of his shoulder blades. Like a porcupine. "What about this guy?" she asks the others.

Colonnello taps his chin. "Wasn't this the Rokudo Mukuro person who caused all this mess?"

Viper's fingers drum against his arms. "Wrong. He's still one of Tsunayoshi's enemies, though. Just leave him, woman."

They move on, following the sounds of explosions and showering glass. It's the same building and the same path Jai took before, only the paw-prints are gone and the debris has gotten more abundant. She can feel the pulses of dynamite raining rocks down onto their level from the floor above them. They cling to her hair and bounce off her nose.

Fon stops them halfway down the corridor. He peers through a crack in one of the walls and sighs. Quietly. Melancholic. "Jai, do you think you could do me a rather large favor?"

"Well, yeah! What is it?"

His knuckles rap against the stone. "A relative of mine is being contained in the room beyond this wall. Tsuna's Cloud Guardian, Hibari Kyoya. I believe he's in no state to battle, as he wouldn't be held prisoner otherwise, but if you could—"

"Heal him? Sure thing!" That's easy enough. Jai gathers her Flames into her wind-up fist. "I can just bust down the wall, right?"

Viper scoffs. "What do you need, a permission slip?"

"Wait, wait, wait!" Skull gestures wildly in Fon's direction. "Are you sure you're allowed to…have him healed? Reborn-senpai might get pissed, you know! He said not to interfere!"

The Storm shrugs. "I am willing to accept the consequences." Which is really a fancy way of saying _I don't care_, from what she hears. He offers her a spiteful smile. "And Jai, would you mind not mentioning my name in Kyoya's presence?"

She nods. Fon's always like this around family. Elusive, for whatever reason.

So Jai reels her arm back, gathers up the pressure in the tendons running beneath her skin, and slams into the stone wall. The resounding crack sounds like lightning. Spider webs of cracks surround the collapsing hole in front of them.

Their invisibility cover—courtesy of Viper—pulls away from her as she steps over and through her new passageway. Slowly, the infants fade from her senses. The only way she can tell they're still with her is by their Flames.

The room she enters is dark. Cold. It's literally a giant square slab sitting in the middle of the building—would be if it weren't for the massive cherry blossom trees growing around the sides. Those flowers are out of season.

In the middle, a Cloud sits with his head bowed and his arms resting on his knees. Scabbed and bleeding all over.

Jai waves at him. "Hey! Hibari Kyoya, right?"

She's seen a lot of scary looks in her life, but this boy's glare beats all of them. He has it nailed. Perfected. "Who are you?" he rasps.

"I'm Jai, friend of Takeshi's." She lets a glow seep into her fingers. "I'm here to heal you up. Ready to get back into the game?"

Hibari flashes his teeth. Even though he's a pitiful sight right now, it still manages to be murderous. He probably sends tons of people running that way. "Hurry."

Jai drops to her knees in front of him. His energy is fluctuating. Quivering. Not natural, and therefore not healthy. There are blotchy spots in his Flames where there shouldn't be—a darkness tainting.

She mends the easier wounds first. A cut across the torso. A massive bruise flourishing on his foot. The blotchiness on his shoulder. She pulls his skin across his gashes, pours new blood into his veins, snaps and tightens his muscles together again. There's no time to heal all of his injuries properly or accurately, so she focuses on the worst and leaves the rest as it is.

Hibari is impatient, too. He hides it well, but his glinting eyes tell her enough. Crazy boy.

He has poison in his body. In and out the crevices of his system. Jai presses against his heart and lets her Sun Flames weave their way in, winding around the dark spots and smothering it all away.

This healing goes slowly. Poison is a tricky thing to deal with. "You have nice Flames," she says as she works, since it's true. They're soft. Gentle. They're castles of clouds, bursting with volume.

He pins her with another glare.

Jai laughs at the way his Flames expand, like they're taking a deep breath and holding it. Her Flames die from her hands. "All done!"

They rise together. Hibari wraps together a fist and twists his wrist around a little.

"Feeling better?"

He grunts. She'll take that as a yes.

Somewhere upstairs, another bomb goes off.

She jabs her thumb at the hole in the side of the room. "Have fun, then!"

He moves forward. Pauses. Turns his head towards her. "You?"

"Oh, I'm sticking around. I'll be watching your fight with Rokudo Mukuro." Jai lets Viper's Mist Flames creep across her shoulders and watches Hibari's eyes narrow. In the Cloud's perspective, her body would be disappearing into thin air piece by piece. She laughs. "Don't mind me, though. You're free! Go all out!"

The illusion slides back into place in full, as do the infants nearby and on her shoulders. "I…I don't think you really need to be encouraging him," Skull comments. He's somehow managed to find a way to sit comfortably in the hood of her jacket.

Hibari scoffs, gaze lingering on the place where she stands, and exits the room. He probably doesn't have the patience to figure out what her deal is.

As Jai follows behind him, Fon twirls a hand around the end of his braid. "Well. Kyoya's mother has never tried to curb his violent tendencies."

It's funny, how different those two are. "I like him," she says.

Colonnello throws up his hands. "You _can't_ like him, Jai! Not a single thing happened in those ten minutes that made the kid seem remotely likeable, kora! When are you going to make sense?!"

His face is priceless. She bursts into laughter.

A sharp cuff on the head cuts her off. Courtesy of Viper. Oof. "Calm down and go up the stairs, woman! Do you want to watch Tsunayoshi's trial or not?"

"I do, I do!"

"Then hurry up!"

As they take the stairs up to Gokudera's battle grounds, trailing a few steps behind Hibari without him knowing, Fon pipes up. "Your healing is always remarkable, Jai. Have you ever thought of teaching someone? Sasagawa Ryohei, perhaps?"

She leaps over a crumbling slab of stair. "I've thought about it, yeah! He'd be a great guy to work with! But healing's not really his forte, you know? I'm thinking that strengthening is more his thing."

"You could still show him your techniques," Skull points out. "Actually…heck, you could probably teach all the Vongola kids if you wanted to! Like, you could show them how to do the stuff you've showed us how to do."

Jai thinks about it. "That would be fun, yeah! I've thought about showing Takeshi some things. Maybe I should ask Reborn if I can—"

Viper scowls. "You are not teaching anyone else anything until you finally decide to show us something _useful_."

"What do you mean, 'useful'?"

"We can't use anything you've taught us in an actual fight, woman!"

"Ha! I'm not showing you how to kill people more efficiently until you're ready for it. And aren't you strong enough already?"

The Mist turns his head away. "No."

Jai frowns at that. She doesn't want to teach them how to hurt, or how to kill. She wants to show them how to heal, and how to dance, and how to sing.

She's not good at killing, anyway. They're much better at it than her.

* * *

It's incredible, what Skies can do. Tsuna reaches out to Fuuta with open arms and warm, kind eyes. Loving. Forgiving. He doesn't care about what Fuuta has done. He wants his family back. His will is pushing forward, dragging Fuuta back into his circle, his protection. Fuuta is his.

And Fuuta _responds_. His little spark becomes a beacon of fire. A conflagration of the sky. He is a warrior, driving the Mist Flames back, fighting for his place in Tsuna's precious little world.

He collapses, passes out from the strain. But his Flames are back now, bright and big. Ten times bigger than before.

Jai marvels at them from above. They're hiding in the spaces in the ceiling, watching the battle through the rusty, grated bars that stain her fingers orange. "Amazing, isn't it?" she asks the others.

Fon's hand twitches on the back of her neck. "Reborn should be proud," he murmurs.

Skull leans forward, balancing on the top of her head. "Shhh!"

Rokudo Mukuro fights hard, but he doesn't fight well. He's cracking. She can see it in his blue-red eyes when Tsuna rises to his feet, a beautiful feather of Flame rippling out of his forehead. Maybe he's realized that he might not win, that he might not see the world of humans burning.

Maybe he's seen a bit of that blue-green planet of life hiding inside Tsuna. Maybe he wants to have it, just a little. Most people would.

It's terrifying when Rokudo possesses the others. Still, everything turns out fine. Hibari breaks through his control, and Tsuna uses his intuition to paralyze the bodies of the rest of his friends.

Rokudo says he's lived through six lives. That he's taken six paths to hell and back again. Jai doesn't know if he's telling the truth or not, but she thinks it would have been nice if this seventh one was better for him. If someone showed him how wrong he was about humans, and the world, and everything. His Flames are wonderfully pure.

But he's not strong enough to take down the sky. He falls, in the end.

The battle is over.

"That was interesting," Fon says, as if they're talking about tomorrow's forecast.

"Tch. So Tsuna and the Cloud kid are the only two left standing? The bastard's got a long way to go with training them up, kora!"

"Whatever. If you morons are done spying, I'm dropping the illusion."

Colonnello and Fon lift up one of the ceiling panels to hop through. The Rain's seagull, Falco, is nice enough to grab her by the back of her jacket and lower her to the ground. Such a gentleman.

Tsuna gapes at them. "Y-You guys—You were watching?!"

Skull's entire body turns jittery. "Wh-What are you talking about?! We…We just got here! We weren't spying on you or anythi—"

A kick from Colonnello sends him flying into the back wall. Hibari snorts in the background silently. Somehow, he manages to make it look regal.

Reborn raises an eyebrow. "I could sense you guys the entire time. Your illusions need work, Viper."

"Hmph, whatever. It's not like I tried. You would've been cued in by the glow of the pacifiers, anyway."

Jai thinks Tsuna's done a good job. He protected the people he loves. She beams at him, and he manages a shaky smile back, looking bemused and probably not even sure why she's grinning at him like that.

"Don't get any closer, byon!"

They turn around as the wild child scrabbles at the floor with his hands. His sharp teeth are bared into a snarl. The one with the needles is also trying to stand. "Don't touch Mukuro-san!" the wild child howls.

Tsuna shakes his head. "W-Why? Why do you do so much for Mukuro? He possessed you guys, used you—"

"Don't speak as if you know everything," says the needles boy.

The wild child opens his mouth, and he tells them everything.

Jai learns about the Estraneo. A famiglia that tortured and experimented its children. Rokudo and his comrades came from that place, that little circle of hell. It's a horrible story. Some sick, twisted tale. No child deserves to hear it, much less live it. No child, old or grown.

The mafia is not a kind place.

Funny. Because as soon as Jai thinks that, a cold hand clenches around her gut. She feels cold. She's freezing.

There's _something_ in the doorway on the far end of the theater. Dark. Empty. Alone. Cold, cold and horrible—

There's _nothing_ in the doorway on the far end of the theater. Literally nothing. She can't even think of it as something real, or tangible. It's a black hole tearing their world apart—

Three people step out of the nothing.

Are they even people? Jai doesn't know. She's staring at an abyss. This is the opposite of the sky, of life, of sound. This is—

What is this supposed to be? A joke? Jai is _terrified._

"Vindice," she hears Reborn say.

_Vindice._ Avenger.

Her intuition is screaming, so this has to be something important. Of course it's important. Jai's never seen anything like them. In fact, she could have kept living just fine without ever seeing them at all. Them and their black coats and bandaged faces.

Everyone else looks tense. "Don't attempt anything, Tsunayoshi," Fon murmurs. "The Vindice are…enforcers, you might say."

"They judge people who don't fit in with the law, and who don't belong underground. Since those three are exiled by the mafia…" Colonnello trails off.

Three chains shoot out from the Vindice. Giant clasps lock onto the necks of the boys. The wild child claws at his throat, and the one with the needles simply closes his eyes. Too resigned. Too forlorn.

She's seen a lot of things in her life, but this is kind of pushing it. "Hold on! They're just going to take them? Why?"

"The Vindice will trial them and give them their punishment." Reborn's expression is shadowed. "They're enforcers of the commandments of the mafia world. This is their justice."

The chains scrape a harsh song as they drag the boys away.

Jai doesn't want this.

The Vindice are death. They look death. They breathe death. They're dragging away three old, grown boys, and one of them is a Mist, pure and full of life. They're going to take that life away.

The others aren't doing anything to stop them. Rokudo is going to rot from the inside out if he gets dragged off with those people. She knows he's done horrible things. He wants to destroy the world. But this—whatever punishment he'll receive, she doesn't think anybody will deserve it. Not at the hands of those people.

Those Flames of the Vindice are wrong. They are lost. They are nothing.

So what can she do in the few seconds she has left before that group disappears into that black hole in the doorway? Not much. There are only a few options. Like starting a war. Trying to escape with those boys—that's not likely. That leaves politics.

Stars. Jai hates politics. She's fairly good at bluffing, though.

"Halt, Vindice!" she calls.

She makes sure her voice has that commanding quality to it. It has the desired effect. The Vindice pause—and the side effect is that everyone else pauses too, their eyes dilating in unison.

The whole reason why Jai actually stepped down from her former Sun Guardian position is because of politics. That doesn't mean she's bad with it. She's sort of…passable. Then again, she's talking to a trio of white, bandaged faces here. That leaves her at a disadvantage. No expressions to work with.

Reborn's voice is slow. Steady. "Jai, stop whatever you're trying to pull."

"Sorry, Reborn." Jai raises her voice again and switches to Italian. For politics. _"The Vindice have no right to take those three away."_

The wild child and the needles kid gape at her. The Vindice in the middle tilts his head. _"The Vindice have every right to Rokudo Mukuro and his accomplices,"_ he rasps. The sound grates more than their chains.

"Jai, what the hell are you—"

She steps forward a little more. Her mind is racing. Her heart is pounding. _"The Vindice have the right to trial those who commit crimes beyond the reach of the law, and those with no underground organization to their name. Is that not right?"_

The head Vindice twitches their hand a little. They seem impatient. _"You are correct."_

Jai nods and licks her dry lips. This might work, or it might not. She'll have to see. _"Then those three are not under your jurisdiction."_

_"Explain."_

_"The Vindice take those who do not belong, yet those three are under my protection."_

In the corner of her eye, the wild child freezes. Thankfully, he doesn't speak. This won't work if he starts calling her out on her lies.

_"What protection is this?"_ rumbles the Vindice at the right.

She takes a deep breath and holds her head high. _"I speak for the Ancient and Honorable House of Vernai. As its inheritor, I claim guardianship of Rokudo Mukuro and his allies."_

Silence. Dead silence.

_"The House of Vernai,"_ says the Vindice on the left. _"Never heard of it."_

Jai stares at them. _"Would you deny my right to these boys simply because of your ignorance on the matters of the Vernai?"_

A subtle jab to get their attention. Aiva would be proud.

_"This conflict no longer concerns the Vindice,"_ she continues. _"It lies between the Vongola and the Vernai. You have no place—"_

The middle one jangles his chains. Jai thinks she can see Mukuro's eyelids flutter. _"We cannot acknowledge your claim. The House of Vernai has never stepped forward to accept their responsibilities for this group's previous crimes. As such, their fates now lie in the hands of the Vindice."_

This one's basically calling her out on her bluff without actually calling her out on her bluff. That's fine. Jai isn't done yet.

_"Rokudo Mukuro accepted the House of Vernai's guardianship four days ago, speaking on the behalf of himself and his close subordinates,"_ she says, willing the wild child and the needles kid to stay quiet. _"They are recognized by the Vernai, and under my House's name, I ask for their release."_

_"We cannot accept."_ Yes, definitely impatient. _"This group has escaped Vendicare Prison once before. They have yet to serve their full sentences given to them for their previous crimes. Unless the House of Vernai wishes to bargain for them, you have no right to speak here."_ Condescending. That last bit, at least.

This puts Jai in a bad position. She can't argue against their sentences. She doesn't have anything to bargain with. Even if she tried to bargain, she might not be able to keep the secret that the House of Vernai doesn't really exist anymore, and that she's the last living member.

She still has one last chance. She can do something wild.

An idea forms. A horrible idea, but still—a doable one. The silence is stretching. Jai doesn't have time to think. She has to go for it.

_"I challenge you to a duel,"_ she says.

The Vindice raise their heads.

Chaos erupts.

"Oh my _god_," Skull whispers in her hood.

"Are you insane?! You can't—What do you think you're—"

"Viper, knock her out before she—"

Jai's voice rises to a shout. _"A duel, to decide which party claims those three! The House of Vernai shall fight for Rokudo Mukuro and his allies!"_

The Vindice lets out a distorted sound. It might be a laugh. _"You have no idea whom you are dealing with."_

True.

But this is what she has to do. _"Do the Vindice accept or decline this challenge?"_

_"Is this your idea of a bargain?"_

_"It is."_

His chains rattle. _"State the boundaries."_

_"To death or forfeit."_

_"Acceptable."_ He hands the chains of Rokudo and his allies over to the Vindice on the right. _"You are honored with the right to a weapon. The duel will commence as soon as one is procured."_

She frowns. _"What, right now?"_

_"We see no reason to postpone,"_ he replies.

In other words, they want to finish this quickly. They think they can just hit her once and she'll crumple.

She's beginning to wonder how much of a chance she has at pulling this off. There's no turning back now, though.

Jai looks at Reborn.

"You're an idiot." His mouth pulls down, which is how you can tell when he's angry. "Why are you doing this?"

She shakes her head. "I—"

Viper grabs her chin and drags it forward. "Do you want to kill yourself?!" he shouts. "Don't you understand what you've done?! You just challenged the Vindice to a duel! The Vindice! They're going to _slaughter_ you!"

"Viper!" Fon snaps, and the Mist releases her. The Storm looks agitated. "Jai, please reconsider this!"

Jai meets Tsuna's burning golden gaze in the back. If he can be brave, so can she. "Reborn, I need Leon."

Reborn tugs the brim of his fedora. "I'm not going to tell you to stop," he says after a while. "After all, this has nothing to do with the Vongola." Meaning that Jai will have to explain this whole House of Vernai business to him later. His dark eyes hold hers. "But Jai, you're going to lose."

A remarkable vote of confidence.

She cracks a smile. "I'm not going to die today."

Wordlessly, he plucks Leon off his hat and hands him to her. The chameleon chirps and transforms into a gun. Black. Smooth. It feels awkward in her fingers.

She taps it. "A short sword, please."

Leon changes into a simple blade the length of her arm, with a plain hilt that fits her grip perfectly. Jai slices it in the air. Good.

The head Vindice is already stepping forward. The other two step back. They seem like they just finished up a discussion.

Skull slides down her back and onto the floor. They all look so worried. Actually, only Fon and Skull look worried. The others are just furious. Meanwhile, Tsuna looks like he's about to faint. His mouth opens and closes like a dying fish. Hibari simply gazes at her like she's the most fascinating specimen he's ever laid eyes on.

Jai doesn't have time to regret anything. She steps forward.

Rokudo and the other boys are dragged off to the side. "Mist Arcobaleno, you are a witness to this duel. Create a barrier at once," orders the head Vindice.

Viper purses his lips. An indigo dome shimmers into existence. It looks like a thin layer of diamonds.

The other two Vindice take their places on either side of the dome. "Any interference from outside sources will result in punishment," one of them intones.

Jai catches sight of a group of people in white coats, inching their way around the dome. Medics. Good—that'll keep Gokudera and Bianchi and everyone else from bleeding out while they're fighting.

She flips her sword around, testing the weight. It feels like ages since she last used a weapon.

The head Vindice tilts his bandaged head again. "This is your last chance to back out."

Jai shakes off her sandals and kicks them to the side. The floor feels like ice against her toes. "Nah."

"The duel between representatives of the Vindice and the House of Vernai shall now commence." The Vindice on the right of the dome slashes their hand into the air. "Begin."

Her heart stutters.

One moment the Vindice is standing on the other side of the dome. In the next, he's right in front of her, a straight hand rushing forward. It bites into her stomach and tears through her skin. Pain splits. Blood scatters.

Jai closes her eyes. She didn't even have time to move. She thinks she can hear Tsuna scream.

The pain is like drowning in molten glass. Her entire body is arching from it. The Vindice twists his hand, and that's a whole new world of hurt in itself.

He pulls out and turns to walk away. Jai slumps against Viper's barrier. She's going to die. She's going to sleep. The duel is over.

Just kidding.

Her Sun Flames are bursting from her core, spiraling across her stomach. Her skin is stretching into place. The indent of his hand fills back up with flesh and blood, pumping through her heart and her limbs, liquid lava in every breadth of her body. Jai pushes herself off the dome and straightens, whole and new in the few seconds it took for her to heal.

Jai is one of the _greatest healers in_ _the world._

The Vindice's head jerks around. "What—"

There's no time to breathe.

She lashes out with her sword. It slices through the Vindice's pitch-black coat and comes away red on the edges. He staggers backward, but Jai is already there, her fist slamming into his ribs with a crack.

Except that crack sounds off. It's too loud. Broken ribs shouldn't be that loud.

His boot swipes and nicks the back of her head. Wow. He's fast. That's a problem.

Jai twists around as the Vindice lunges for her, but she can't move quickly enough. He grabs a fistful of the back of her jacket and pulls. She ducks down, flicks her sword around, and cuts the fabric with a hissing slice.

His fingers twitch into claws.

They bury themselves into the base of her neck. It hurts. The pain is searing. She pushes away as her Sun Flames pour new blood in, take the shattered fragments of her collarbone and seals it all together again.

The Vindice's chain shoots out, a silvery knife attached to the end of it. Jai mostly dodges—her cheek takes a gash, it feels wet—and deflects the second one. Her arms glow with strength and sunshine.

The third chain stabs into her thigh. She tugs it out, heals in a hurry. Her hands find their way around the chain and they pull, hard and fierce. Her feet dig up splinters from the ground.

The Vindice pulls back, harder and fiercer. He's also stronger than her. Stronger and faster.

Jai shouldn't have underestimated him. Now she's going to pay for it.

Her Sun Flames rattle the links and shoot forward, fast as light, faster than sound. Nothing should match their speed, but he somehow manages to let go of the chain before the heat sparks on his fingers. He throws out his arm, three chains emerging from beneath his tattered coat.

Jai's blood roars in her ears. She hears the whistle of knives and ducks them all—barely, just barely.

But 'barely' isn't going to work.

She dives for him. A single moment of hesitation is fatal.

Bandaged hands plunge into her. His chains wrap and strangle her arms and legs and waist. She heals her wounds, all of them. It's a matter of wearing him down. Perseverance.

Their movements are fluid. They're dancing together. The Vindice kills her, and Jai revives herself from the brink of death each time. It's a cycle.

One of them needs to end it. Her Flames are working overtime. She can't keep this up forever.

"You are more than what you appear to be," the Vindice bites out between strikes that make her arm throb from the force of them. "You leave me no choice."

That doesn't sound good at all.

He flings out his arm, and black Flames dance above his skin. Dark, cold Flames. They're leaping at her eyes, her throat, clawing at her lips, prying them open. It's the same feeling. Empty, deadly, freezing to the point of burning.

Jai panics.

She flings out her sword, scraping across the bandages around his forehead. Her other hand slams against her chest. She freezes.

The Vindice doesn't have a heartbeat.

He tosses her onto the ground, and Jai rolls into a crouch. A single strip of bandages falls beside her.

His eyes are grey. Grey, with yellow whites instead of white whites. The skin around them is crackly and brown. Discolored. Milky eyes and rotting skin.

Warmth washes away the burns on her face. The rest of her just feels cold. "You are death," she tells him.

How can she defeat him?

In an instant, the Vindice crosses the distance between them and grabs her throat. His fingers feel rough. Prickly. The air escapes from her lungs in a wheeze.

His Flames are the inverse of life. Life is fire.

He takes the top of her head in his other hand and squeezes. "I wonder how you'll heal yourself if I tear your brain out," he hisses into her ear.

Jai fears his Flames. Is he just as terrified?

It hurts, hurts, hurts. Jai has two seconds before he cracks her skull. Two seconds before her windpipe is crushed. Two seconds.

One second.

Her skin goes white-hot and bright. The Vindice hisses and drops her. The bandages on his fingers fall to the ground, leaving scabbed knuckles and black nails.

Jai teleports. Her vision warps. Dizzyingly.

Now, she stands behind the Vindice's back, staring at his ghostly black coat and the bandages wrapping around his skull. The palms of her hands close around his ears—they're the same height, she notices—and shine like twin suns.

Her Sun Flames reach out to him, him and his dark Flames. Jai closes her eyes and _heals._

You defeat death with life, after all. They'll always come full circle.

She can feel his skin grow taut and smooth against her finger pads. Blood rushes into his cheeks. Light shines in through his eyes, milky-yellow clears into white, eyelashes sprout black and lush, face turning whole—

She can feel his Flames crying and wailing against her touch. They attack her own Sun Flames. They rip through her heart and mind, screeching, a constantly cycling turmoil of despair that sucks the fire from her bones—

Jai is screaming. The Vindice is screaming, too.

He's full of hate. Brimming with it. This black fire should not be inside him. It shouldn't even exist. It does not deserve to be inside him, eating him alive. She drowns in it and sinks, deeper and deeper, looking for the spark of True Fire inside him—and she can't find it anywhere.

He's human, but he's so overwhelmed by hatred she almost thinks otherwise.

Like a universe without the Earth. Like drifting in space, surrounded by darkness, and the stars are full of wrath.

Is this what the Vindice are?

She's still screaming when they pull apart. It's not a pretty sound. It's strangled and running her throat raw. The Vindice clutches his face, his entire body folding inward.

Then, he reaches out. Jai doesn't register her knees being smashed inward until she hears the two sounds accompanying it. Snap, snap. But the pain is nothing compared to the fistful of black Flames he slams into his stomach, spinning around his hand in a whirlwind.

She flies into the dome. The impact feels detached. Not as jarring as it should be.

Her Sun Flames are spluttering, weak and small. Did she really use that much energy while trying to heal him? She didn't even know.

The Vindice is a blurry figure in the distance. Jai slides to the ground with a muted thump. Her heartbeat is slow, and the remnants of her Flames hug her around the waist, trying to heal quicker than she can bleed. It isn't working.

Shivers wrack her body. It really isn't working.

Something gold catches her eye. She turns her head.

It's Tsuna's eyes. Tsuna's eyes are gold, wide, and staring back at her on the other side of the barrier. He says her name, followed by a string of words she can't keep up with.

Jai loves the color gold. That reminds her—his Flames have always been hopeful. Bursting with hope.

Hope is so different from despair.

She can't die. She's not supposed to die. Everyone dies eventually, of course, but now really isn't a good time. She hasn't even found the Trinisette yet.

Slowly, Jai presses her hand against the barrier, where Tsuna's hands are already pawing. Her fingers streak red, and his voice rises to a shout. It's getting pretty hard to hear him. That isn't a good sign, is it?

But Jai isn't going to die. There's so much left to do.

She reaches inward, all the way to her core, and wrenches the last of her Sun Flames up to the surface. They soothe the ache in her stomach—no, she's not going to look at that wound, it'll make her sick—and glue the bones in her knees back in place. The whole process is slow. Achingly slow.

But hey, she did it. She's one of the greatest healers in the world. Dineva told her so.

Her vision blurs green and purple when she pushes herself to her feet. The Vindice on the other side of the dome still hasn't moved. She doesn't think he's spoken much, either. This is the first time he's let her recover without trying to finish her off.

Jai swallows. Loudly, in her head. The sword—Leon—is lying a little ways away from her feet.

She moves to pick it up, and stops.

Her arm won't obey her. Her entire body is stiff, and her legs might as well have been ravaged by Rokudo's wild dogs. The sword looks farther than it really is.

Her Flames are out. She's run completely dry. It's over.

The Vindice is watching her. Doing nothing. Saying nothing. Why isn't he trying to kill her?

Challenging him to a duel was a stupid idea, in retrospect.

Jai blinks rapidly a few times as she stares down at the sword. Her energy is low. Her chances of winning the battle are completely gone, now. Maybe they weren't even there at all in the first place.

She's going to fall into another coma at this rate. That would be horrible.

Ah.

Defeat is very, very sour.

"I forfeit," she says.

The two other Vindice outside the dome dip their heads. The barrier fades away, leaving a ruined theater and a metallic taste in the air.

Jai feels a sharp tugging at the hem of her pants, and lets herself fall to her knees. A small hand presses against the space behind her ear, next to her jawline.

She watches the Vindice drag the three boys away. Rokudo woke up at some point during their fight. She can't quite see the expression on her face, but he doesn't stop looking at her until he disappears through the portal of black Flames.

(Her first failure was with Faux. This is her second.)

The head Vindice, her opponent, stays where he is until both his comrades are gone. He starts walking toward her.

Something black shines in the corner of her eye. That's Reborn's gun. His favorite one, aside from Leon. He snaps out something her brain can't quite process.

"What is your name?" rasps the Vindice, his voice rough and easier for her to hear. Her healing was reverted, somehow. The sliver of face she can see is back to being bruised and rotten.

It takes a moment for her to realize he's talking to her. "Jai," she says, her thoughts sluggish. "Yours?"

He makes a motion in the air, creating another black-hole portal of his own. "Jack."

And he disappears, his tattered coat fluttering behind him.

Tsuna's pale hands glance off her arm. Jai slumps sideways against him. "Sleep," someone says into her ear.

She sleeps.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** so at first mukuro's arc was just going to be this very small thing, right? because it has nothing to do with the trinisette or the arcobaleno, right? WRONG, because i reread that part of the manga and BAM the vindice make their first appearance, so it's not like i could just let that pass by. which is why you get…THIS. (now mukuro's arc is even more important than the future arc hahaha wow)

anyway, part of the reason why jai gets to fight one of the vindice is to show you guys just how useless she is at fighting! yeah! her super healing abilities are supposed to make up for it, though. so hopefully she's turned out balanced. (also, about jack? he's one of the guys who shows up for like two chapters in the representative battle arc, fighting for bermuda's team. so that's where he comes from.)

this is the longest chapter so far, which will make up for the next chapter that happens to be a short one. thank you guys so much for your follows and favorites and your absolutely lovely reviews!


	7. Orange

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes: **we've reached 50,000 words! and to the guest reviewer that asked: jai won't be paired with anyone at all, for one. there will be some extremely small and subtle pairings between side characters (such as ? x deadperson and chrome x yamamoto because wow look at that OTP strolling on by) but either it's not going to matter or it'll only be visible if you squint really hard. so do those pairings even count? NAH! don't worry about it.

* * *

7\. ORANGE

* * *

_Jai is young._

_She is standing next to Dineva's warm, tan spot of shoulder-skin. Her hands are dirty and rubbed raw by the clay-covered stones, and her back aches from all the crouching and curling in the rocks. Her hair is a wild tangle of seaweed lines._

_A long, slender hand reaches around her neck and cradles her cheek. Jai smells blackberries. Blackberries and fresh purple dye. "You're a very strong Sun, my dear," says the man with the cherry-colored eyes._

_She feels bad, because her face is covered in clay, but he doesn't seem to mind. In fact, he smiles at her. He has a beautiful smile. So instead of apologizing, she tilts her head down, because she feels so scared and small in front of him and his shiny scarlet eyes._

_He clicks his tongue against the top of his mouth. "That won't do, child. Do you look at things? Tell me if you look at things, sweet child."_

_"I do look at things," she says._

_"Well, the gaze of a child is a powerful thing. People bring joy to others with their eyes. Tell me, do you love others?"_

_"I do love others."_

_"Whom do you love?"_

_"My friends, signore."_

_The cherry-eyed man laughs. The sound is deep, like a mountain song. "That is a fine thing to love. But do you love life, my dear? Do you love the world?"_

_She smiles at her toes. "I do love the world."_

_"Then you must look at the world, so that it may meet your gaze and see that love." His fingers tap against her nose. "Will you please give me your love, my dear? I would be honored, so very honored."_

_Jai tilts her head back up and looks into his shiny, red, kind eyes. "Here you go," she says, feeling a bit silly about it all._

_He gasps and clutches his heart. "Why, I am blessed! I am empowered! You have given me such a wondrous gift—oh, how may I repay you, gracious girl?"_

_She giggles. "You don't—You don't have to repay me." Her chin tips back a little more._

_He smiles his pretty smile again. "Thank you, thank you! You will share your gaze with the rest of the world, won't you? I'm sure it will be transformed into a wonderful, beautiful place, right before your eyes." Something old shows itself in the creases of his face. "Yes, you are a big, bright Sun. A mighty healer one day, I believe. Why on earth would you hide such greatness away?"_

_And when the cherry-eyed man takes his smooth hand away from her clay-covered cheek, Jai is no longer scared, and she is no longer small._

* * *

Jai peels her eyes open to a clear view of a clear sky. The sunlight sticking to her eyelashes looks like dragonfly wings. Rainbow-veined. A mild breeze flows in through the window square.

What a vivid dream.

Her whole face feels stiff. She pries her sticky lips apart and drags some loose hair out of her mouth. It feels like she's slept for weeks. The owl clock on the wall looks like the one in Tsuyoshi's guest room—

Actually, this _is_ Tsuyoshi's guest room. Huh. And the clock reads about nine.

"You're awake."

Jai pushes the floral blankets off her shoulders and glances to her right. Reborn stares back at her from his seat against the pillows, a mallet in his hands. His mouth has a rather crisp edge to it, like the edge of a browning leaf.

She grins, ignoring the ache settling in the side of her neck. The morning feels fresh against her skin. It's almost relieving to see him. "Hey, Reborn!"

He slams the mallet into her forehead. Twice.

Nevermind. _Nevermind._

"The first one was on Colonnello's behalf. The second was for me."

Jai lets out a short laugh despite the new lump in her forehead. "Reborn! I'm sorry! Really!"

He raises an eyebrow. "No, you're not."

"I am! I'm sorry for making you guys upset."

The handle of the mallet twirls in his stubby fingers. The crinkles in his suit look sharp from up close. "You've been out for about a day and a half. Flame exhaustion, mostly. All your physical wounds are healed, but your Flames seem a bit slower to catch up. Tsuyoshi and Yamamoto took you in, if you haven't noticed already."

She rubs the paste out of the corners of her eyes. Even that motion feels stiff. Awkward. "Oh. Okay. How's everyone else?"

"Yamamoto, Gokudera, Bianchi, and Hibari are mostly healed. Tsuna has a little more time to go. And Viper's just about ready to kill you, by the way." Reborn points at the glass of water behind him. "Drink that first."

Jai does. It washes away the nasty taste in her throat. "How's Fuuta?" she asks after downing half the drink.

"He's fine. Recuperating."

"Whew! That's good!" Needles shoot through her spine as she rests her back against the wall. She laughs. "Ooh, I feel like a brick. Serves me right."

Reborn smirks. "Yes, serves you right for fighting against the _Vindice_. You're even worse than Dame-Tsuna." The mallet transforms back into a drowsy-eyed, irritated Leon. The chameleon sticks its tongue out at her. "It's time for you to explain."

"About what?"

"What do you think?" He gives her a flat look. "I shouldn't need to give you a starting point. Why did you do it?"

Jai stretches her wrists until they let out satisfying pops. "Do what? Pick a fight with the Vindice?" She frowns. "Basically, I didn't want them to take Rokudo and his pals."

"Don't tell me you took pity on them."

"No, not like that. It's hard to say, you know?" She sips her water. "There's something wrong with them. The Vindice. Their Flames are—scary, really. I didn't know what they were, and they were taking those guys away, so I felt like I needed to step in. Which ended up being a pretty bad idea—"

Reborn makes a sound of impending homicide. "You're on their watch list."

Her water suddenly sours. "What?"

"You're on the Vindice's watch list. Don't look so surprised, Jai. Few people challenge their power and authority, and even fewer get away alive. They're not known for their mercy."

A thought leaps up at her. "Jack didn't finish me off."

"We're calling him an exception." He studies her the same way he usually does. "If you thought you could take on one of their members without facing repercussions, you're naïve. The Vindice are undoubtedly keeping tabs on you now. There's no chance of escape for you. Not from them."

That's nice. Cheers her right up. "I've just pledged the rest of my life to the mafia, haven't I?"

"No, you were already involved. Now you're just in constant danger."

Jai clicks her fingernails against the glass. What a great way to start the morning. "Well, I don't want anything to do with them anymore." She'll have to roll with it, like she always does. "I'll deal with it somehow. Anyway, did Tsuna pass your trial?"

Reborn gives her a long, calculating stare. "He did," he finally replies, "but this isn't about that right now. What's the House of Vernai?"

It takes a moment for her to remember when she even mentioned it. "Oh, that!" She grins at him. "The House of Vernai doesn't exist anymore. It used to, though, and I really was a part of it once, but the whole thing sort of…collapsed, I guess. That was a super long time ago."

He raises an eyebrow. "So this House no longer exists."

"Right! I was winging it the whole time I was talking to those Vindice."

Leon changes into a giant hammer and slams down on her shins. _Gosh._

_"Hey!"_

"That was dangerous. You don't lie so blatantly in front of one of the strongest underground organizations in the world without some sort of backup."

Jai rubs her new bruise. "Actually, I guess the Vernai _might_ still exist! 'Cause they never officially disbanded in the first place. But I don't know if you can have a House with just one person." Yeah, she has no idea. Pir would probably know. "I wasn't lying about me being the inheritor of the House. Since I'm the last living member, I think that makes me the leader by default. So challenging the Vindice was _technically_ within my authority—"

"That's the flimsiest excuse you could possibly give."

She deflates with a laugh. "It is. But you know, the past is the past—"

"Which leads to the present and the future." Reborn shakes his head. He's fed up with her. Clearly. She's feeling kind of bad about it now (eh, not that she wasn't before). "Is Vernai your last name?" he asks.

Jai gives him her best exasperated glance. "I don't have a last name. This is turning into something suspiciously like a questionnaire—"

"Aren't you worried?"

"Huh?"

His eyes go even darker than they usually are. To think she once compared them to black holes. Oh, they're so much warmer than that. "The Vindice will be watching you," he reminds her. "Aren't you worried?"

Is she?

Her head lolls against the wall a little as she stares at him, stiff and aching and kind of bone-weary. She thinks back to Jack's Flames. The rot in his eyes.

Rokudo's laugh. The wild child's story. The mafia.

"You know, Reborn," she says, and pauses, trying to find the right words. "You come from a dark world."

Reborn's gaze darts down to her hair, and then her hands, and then back to her face again. All in a split-second.

She smiles. "You do a good job, you know? With all of them, especially Tsuna. Tsuna's a Sky and he's made a wonderful home, but he isn't so brilliant, really, without you. And we know life's not so kind, not so perfect." The glass of water glimmers in her grasp. "He's going to be a _warrior_ one day—because of what you'll do, and what you've done. That's amazing."

In the silence that follows, he gives her a deliberate blink. Completely unfazed. He might've expected those words to come straight out of her mouth right from the start. "Flattery gets you nowhere, Jai. We weren't even talking about me. How did you get so side-tracked?"

Jai splutters with laughter. "What I'm _trying _to lead up to is that I'm—not _prepared_, but I'm capable of handling the mafia and all the dangerous people in it, like what _you_ do! I'm really not all that worried!"

"Why aren't you?"

She shrugs. Helplessly. "What do you want me to do, have a breakdown? Maybe they'll come for me one day. Maybe they won't. Either way, I'm going to avoid them like the plague and keep on going, like I've always done."

Life moves on. Time is ticking. Jai came to that understanding a long time ago.

Her life has always been full of adventure.

But if the Vindice do show up again, she really is going to run like hell. She doesn't want anything to do with those Flames of theirs. Not ever.

"You're too carefree," Reborn scolds.

"No, I'm not! My logic's sound!"

A contemplative silence. "True. You're not going to get anywhere by panicking over the inevitable. You should tell that to Dame-Tsuna." He taps the hammer against her thigh. "Really, go talk to Dame-Tsuna sometime. His emotions have been all over the place ever since your little duel, and it's your fault. You should be the one to fix it."

Jai frowns. "Yeah, okay. I need to thank him, too. And then I need to thank Viper for putting up the barrier, and the other guys—" She stares down at the cup of water in her hands.

Oh. Oh, wow.

This is the best thing. The greatest joke in the history of existence. She's so proud of herself. It's going to be worth a thousand years of pain.

A giddy grin spreads across her cheeks. "Hey! Hey, Reborn!"

"Wh—" He narrows his eyes at her. Impending disgust is etched into every line, every eyelash. _"Don't."_

She tips the glass of water in his direction, hard-pressed not to laugh her way into the stars. "Water the other guys up to?"

As the birds sing morning-songs outside the window and sunlight bathes the street clean, Reborn smashes his hammer into her face with the force and fury of an elephant stampede.

* * *

The hitman tells her the others are angry. This turns out to be an understatement of massive proportions.

"_Who_, exactly, is supposed to teach me _anything_ about my Flames if you go and _kill yourself off_ before I'm done learning, you brain-dead fool of a girl?!" Viper hisses. There's a swarm of illusionary wasps buzzing beneath his cloak, poised to strike. Jai regrets telling him how much she dislikes those things.

Fon isn't much better. "Please do not risk your head over reckless performances ever again," he says. _Or else_, she hears unsaid after a thunderous pause, and shudders.

Colonnello's sniper rifle shoots foam, but the stinging impact makes those bullets feel like diamonds. He looks ready to throttle her the moment she enters his line of sight. "You're a complete idiot! How is it physically possible for someone's brain to be so small? Didn't you hear us telling you not to pick a fight with those guys?!"

"W-What those guys said! I mean—you _numbskull!"_ Skull shouts, fury plain in his voice. Still, he hops onto her shoulder and digs his fingers into her hair until they brush against her scalp. That just makes her feel even guiltier.

Eventually, Jai collapses into one of the chairs at the bar. She huffs a laugh. "I'm _sorry_."

A broad hand clasps her shoulder. "It's nice that you are," Tsuyoshi says mildly as he takes a seat next to her. "Just…Why did you do it? What reason did you have for fighting the Vindice, of all people?"

She entwines her fingers atop her head, presses her cheekbone against the counter. Behind her, the infants stall in the middle of their discussion on how moronic she is in favor of listening to her reply. "I got desperate, I guess? I mean, there were two options—try to stop Rokudo from getting taken away, or _let_ Rokudo get taken away. And I didn't want them to take him, or his kids. Those Vindice don't sit right with me, you know? I get this horrible feeling just by looking at them."

She got desperate, in the end. The duel was a bad decision.

Tsuyoshi watches her with half-lidded eyes. The grip on her shoulder tightens. "Even so, thinking you were able to take on the Vindice is more than overestimating yourself." He pauses. "I didn't know you could kill."

That's right. Jai can kill. He didn't know.

Because being in a duel means being prepared to take your opponent's life, but Jai—she never even told Tsuyoshi she knew how to _fight._

He probably knew, of course. He would've assumed that she could, given her skill with Flames. But still, she never told him she's not so young, not so innocent.

One hand creeps up over her heart, while the other winds around Tsuyoshi's arm. "I'm not from the mafia and I don't like to fight," she explains, "but I've killed a person. Several people, actually. Like, six or seven, somewhere around there. But Tsuyoshi, I'm never going to—" Her words run out in the same way air might bleed from her lungs.

She promised she'd never hurt them. It was silent, but she swore. He should remember.

"I know," he murmurs. Thank the stars, he _does_. "But don't do that again, Jai."

"Do what?"

A crinkling smile and a snort. "At least warn people before you do something rash. Also, don't jump into fights without getting an idea of your enemy's strength first, understand?"

Jai dissolves into laughter. Her relief doesn't show.

She loves these people with all her heart.

"I'm back!"

They all turn around as Takeshi enters the shop. His brilliant laugh pierces right through the air. He sounds excited. "Jai! You're awake! How're you feeling?"

She grins back. "Stiff and sore all over! What about you?"

He launches himself into the chair on her other side. "Great, actually! I heard you were the one who healed my arm—so thanks for that! It would've sucked if I couldn't make the autumn games." His eyes seem to twinkle. The ocean inside of him is a comforting presence. "I heard you fought some pretty tough guys, though. The mafia game can be rough sometimes."

She gives him a casual high-five. "Yeah, well—I say it's still pretty fun!"

The choking noise that follows comes from Colonnello. Fon pounds the Rain on the back a few times to no avail.

Viper actually groans. That's a first. She wants a recording of it. "Alright, that's enough! Woman, it's time you start explaining yourself." His black glove almost smacks her across the nose. "What is this 'House of Vernai'? And what was the whole thing about claiming guardianship over Rokudo Mukuro and those boys?"

"Aha. Well." Jai twists her head around to look at him. "I was _completely_ fibbing!"

He twitches. Violently. And—oh, no.

His illusionary wasps chase her back into the safety of the guest room.

* * *

Tsuna almost bumps into her on a bland grey sidewalk of a bland grey street. It turns out that he was heading to Takesushi to visit her, while she was heading to his house to visit him. Coincidences.

His eyes are brown, not gold, and they look…crackly. There's a sallowness to his skin that wasn't there before. Nightmare signs. "Um," he says, and falters.

Jai whisks him away.

They go to a red wooden bridge across a tiny green river. The water sparkles with the facets of emeralds. She leans on the railings next to him, searches out the tiny fish swimming near the surface, and says, "Thanks for earlier, Tsuna."

He jolts a little. "Huh? For what?"

"Rooting for me during the battle! That's what you were doing, right? I couldn't really hear you too well, but the fact that you were there was enough to get me back on my feet again. So, thank you!"

His jaw drops a centimeter or so as he fumbles for words. "I—well, you're welcome, I guess? But I really don't think I did much…" He cringes slightly. "Wait, you mean if I hadn't been there, you—you wouldn't have…"

"Gotten back up?" And here lies the root of Tsuna's troubles. "No, I probably would've eventually. Even so, you still helped. But why would you put it that way?"

Tsuna stares straight ahead. "I…I don't know?"

Jai laughs. The sky is a nice, pearly color today. "What're you thinking about?"

The rippling of the water doesn't seem to soothe any of the tension in his body. "Why…Why did you scream when you were healing the Vindice's face?" he finally asks.

"My healing was being rejected, for one. I don't know how, and I don't know why. Maybe Jack was doing that on purpose." She watches the swooping crows overhead. "His Flames weren't all that nice, either. I guess that's another reason."

Tsuna rubs one thumb over another. "Oh." His eyes darken to amber. "Jai?"

"Yeah?"

"Why aren't you scared? I mean, that guy could've killed you! You were so close to—" He cuts himself off. "How come you're still…"

She can think of a thousand ways to finish that sentence. "I'm still a bit scared," she admits, "mainly because I'm not looking forward to meeting those guys again. But it's not too bad."

"Wh-What do you mean, 'not too bad'? They _hurt_ you!"

It probably wasn't all that pleasant for him, to see someone almost die like that. He would've seen her wounds. "Hey, Tsuna. There's this saying in Japanese that goes like, fall down six times and stand up seven. Something like that, right?"

"Fall seven times and stand up eight—but you're not supposed to take that _literally!"_

Her laughter comes out wicked. "No, no, that's true! But it's a good lesson, don't you think?" She notices the way his eyes widen. "If you can keep standing up, and fighting against the obstacles life throws your way, you can accomplish anything! So long as you push forward and your will is strong enough—"

"But…" Tsuna bites his lip. "But that's…"

Jai's heart aches for him. "Tsuna, really. What're you thinking about?"

His mouth opens and closes. She hopes he decides to share his thoughts with her. Tsuna is an ever-expanding Sky, but he's also a kind boy with a working mind, facing an unkind world. She forgets that sometimes.

"The Vindice makes me sick," he says. His voice is haunted. "They're…They're enforcers of the mafia laws. But what they did to you, it was…horrible. It was _too much_, it was…"

"So what are you scared of?"

Tsuna's knuckles bleach white. "I'm scared of the mafia! Of people like them! I'm scared of seeing people I know get hurt, like—like you! I don't want to see my friends and family end up—" His face pinches with horror. "This is exactly why I don't want to be a mafia boss!"

Jai laughs, captivated by his round, brown-orange eyes.

"Jai, I-I really don't think this is funny!"

"No, you're right, it's just…" Her heart swells with something like delight. "The mafia isn't so bad, is it? It gave you Reborn, anyway."

He winces. "Th-There's nothing great about having a Spartan tutor hanging around…"

"It gave you Gokudera. He's one of your best friends, isn't he? But he's also a hitman." She tilts her head. "It gave you Takeshi. He has the makings of a natural assassin."

Tsuna squints at her. "I know! And it's horrible!"

"The mafia's given you _two best friends_. And then it gave you Fuuta, who looks up to you like a little brother. It gave you Bianchi, who watches over you and Gokudera. Hmm…oh! It gave you Dino, too! He thinks of you as family!" Jai grins at the bewilderment on his face. "The mafia gave me Tsuyoshi, Fon, Colonnello, Viper, Skull—and do you really think I'd have it any other way?"

"I…"

She laughs. "Tsuna, look at what you _have!_ You have so many wonderful people around you, you have a family, your circle is almost complete—this is what the mafia can _be!"_

"I…I know that, and I really care about my friends, but…people kill in the mafia! And after seeing what the Vindice can do, I'm just—I'm worried…" He shakes his head. His brown hair floats feather-like. "Aren't you scared of what people like them can do?"

Jai nudges him gently with an elbow. "It's about being brave. It's about keeping your head up and never letting anything bring your friends down—not death, not pain, not anything."

"I'm not brave," Tsuna whispers.

For a moment, she thinks about kneeling right there, right in front of him. He really doesn't know how great he is. It makes her want to punch through a wall. "You're everything, Tsuna. You _are_ _bravery_." She runs back through her memories, thinking of the words Pir once told them as they took a walk along the seaside. "Hey, do you want to hear a story?"

"Um, okay?"

She tugs him down. They sit with their legs dangling over the bridge, arms folded over the bottom half of the wooden rails.

"Once upon a time, there were two brothers," she says, "who had big, lovely hearts and souls. They were always nice to everyone, and they accepted people no matter what their backgrounds were. Lots of people liked them.

"Now, the older brother was a bit more adventurous than the younger brother, so he liked to go around and explore places and find new civilizations—that sort of thing. The younger brother liked staying in one place, the paradise they called home, where it was basically secure and comfortable.

"So, one day, the older brother came across this gigantic apple tree sitting smack dab in the middle of a really, really nice forest. And this forest was pretty great, you know? All the animals were thriving and the people living in the nearby villages were more than happy. Anyway, he found this apple tree, and since it was so cool, he plucked an apple off one of the branches and took a bite. Then, the tree said—"

"Wait, the tree can talk?!"

"Yeah, it can! It's a powerful tree! Okay, so the tree told the older brother that it was happy to see him. Since, you know, not many travelers really came across those parts. But the tree was already thousands of years old, and it was worried it wouldn't produce good fruit anymore in a couple of centuries. So when the older brother finished off this amazing apple right down to the core and was ready to leave, it asked for a favor.

"'Do you think you can take the seeds in that apple you just ate and plant them somewhere nice?' it asked. And the older brother was like, 'Yeah, sure, I'll do it!' But then the tree stopped him again, because he really wanted those seeds to grow well and feed lots of people, so he said, 'Make sure they're planted someplace where they're loved more than any other trees in the world, alright? I'll give you a rad present if you do.' And the older brother was like, 'Nice!'"

"Is…Is that really what they said, or—"

"That's the _general gist_ of it! Anyway, the older brother found two seeds in each little section of the apple core. Since there're five pocket-hole-things in the core of your average apple, that makes ten seeds. He took them back home to paradise where his brother was and told him all about it. The younger brother was like, 'Okay, that's cool, do you mind if I take half these seeds and plant them myself?' 'Cause he figured it'd be pretty fun to help out! And the older brother said, 'Hey, why not?'

"The younger brother got his five seeds. The big tree wanted them to be planted in places where they'd be loved the most, so he planted them in their home, in paradise. They grew pretty quickly, and the people living there appreciated them a lot. They got lots of great soil and good water, so they ended up being these cool, pretty-looking trees.

"Meanwhile, the older brother went outside paradise and traveled over to the different lands. He finally chose to plant these five seeds in this one particular village that nobody liked. The village was poor and violent, and it had a really bad reputation, no allies, constant food shortages—it was basically the one place you didn't want to live in. Tons of people died and got mugged around there. But the older brother went and planted those seeds all around that village.

"Since the soil was practically dead and it hardly ever rained, the older brother had to do tons of work to keep them alive and growing. He started enlisting the thieves and orphans that were hanging around to help him with watering and stuff—which wasn't really hard for him to do, since these brothers were likeable guys. Pretty soon, he had the entire village working to keep these trees growing.

"It paid off, in the end! The trees were beautiful, and they grew so many apples that nobody needed to go hungry! The leftover ones were sold to the other villages, and since they were tasted so good, they went for tons and tons of money. People got so inspired that they stopped focusing on wars and started planting trees of their own, taking care of them, things like that!

"By the time his work was done and he was satisfied with what he accomplished, the older brother had aged almost a century—unlike his younger brother, who didn't really spend a lot of time taking care of his trees. They both had children and grandchildren, and around the time when their deaths were drawing near, the big apple tree that gave them the original ten seeds was also ready to die, and pass its gift off to them.

"So the tree said to itself, 'Those brothers did a really good job planting those seeds! But I can only give this gift to one person, not two. I'd better choose the guy that planted his trees in a place that let them be loved more than the others.'

"Which brother do you think it picked?"

Tsuna fidgets in place. "Uhhh…the older one?"

She gives him a high-five. "You got it! How come, d'you think?"

He scratches a spot next to his ear. Sheepish smile, but thoughtful eyes. "I…I think it's because he planted those trees in a place that sort of…needed them, in a way. The younger brother planted the trees in paradise, where people already had everything. The older brother's trees actually _did_ things, like feeding people and making them happier when their lives were harder, so it fixed up the village. That…That probably made people, uh, love them harder, I guess?" He frowns. "What was the gift the tree was going to give them?"

It's been ages since Pir last told that tale. Jai doesn't really remember. "I forget," she says.

"Seriously?!"

"But you know…" she adds, and laughs. "Do you really think it matters? The older brother's family got to live in a nice village. He made everyone happy, and I bet he died pretty happy, too. That sounds like a fine present to me!"

Jai came up with that satisfying statement on the spot. She feels rather proud of herself.

Tsuna lets out a startled laugh of his own. "Y-Yeah, I guess so, huh?"

"Hey, Tsuna?"

"What?"

"You and your friends should never, ever plant your trees in paradise." She smiles at the sky above her head, and then at the even bigger one sitting next to her. "You get that, right? Plant them where they're needed. You're more than brave enough."

He gives all of them courage. Herself, his friends—Reborn, even. All of them.

His eyes spit fire. Bright, soul-deep resolve. The crackly feel to them is gone, and his lit face burns its way into her memory. "I…I don't know if I can, but…but I'll try. I promise I'll try."

They sit on a ruby bridge above an emerald river beneath a pearly sky, surrounded by worldly gems.

Jai is lucky to know him.

* * *

Rokudo is in Vendicare. She regrets the duel.

But she will never regret trying.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** so, the constant references to people like dineva and aiva and the rest (who are a part of jai's ambiguous past) might be becoming kind of a bore, since you don't really know who they are. so! now you're going to get snippets of her backstory-in-the-form-of-memories at the beginning of each chapter from here on out. CHEERS HAHA (at the same time i hope nobody catches onto the big secrets too quickly uaghh)

thank you guys for reading! reviews, follows, and favorites are appreciated!


	8. Green

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes: **currently being inspired by the soundtrack for child of light and amelie (by yann tiersen). the songs for child of light are a bit too haunted for faux's overall mood, but they're both super pretty and glorious and you should totally have a listen if you've never heard them before.

this chapter was a nightmare to write. please enjoy, regardless!

* * *

8\. GREEN

* * *

_The green beads weaved into Vescen's braids click together as she walks past. Jai likes the way she walks. Like a princess, with her neck long and the hem of her gown drifting by. "You should do what you think is wise, bambine," she says after a fair amount of tut-tutting. "Why must you always come to me for counsel?"_

_Beside her, Dineva giggles, her feet pit-pattering on the hard ground. "'She who sings steadfast knows best'!" she crows._

_The lady bites her tongue, and the corners of her dainty mouth pull upward. "Said the Fiendfox on her Hill…as that one tends to go. You have been listening to the old Signora Noye, I see."_

_"Yes! She tells the funniest stories."_

_"Which our folk could do without, I believe! Singers do not hear the future's score, as our youth ought to know." Vescen tugs at the thin-threaded rug beneath Jai's legs. "Up, up, up, or do your bottoms weigh boulders from all your stuffing?"_

_"They _don't!"_ Jai squawks as she scrambles to her feet. Dineva simply groans and rolls to the side, all sunset-colored limbs splayed in a million different directions._

_With a teasing smile, Vescen folds the rug into four and drapes it across her arm. "I've a need to clean the room, bambine. Run along now! Children shall not be swept into the dust barrows!"_

_Jai and Dineva exchange glances. These old quarters are warmer than the air outside. Quickly, Jai goes to stall, her mind whirling. "But Signorina, what do we tell Faux? We really don't know if we want to be Guardians or not."_

_The lady hums in the back of her throat. Her dark, slender arms look like dipped wooden carvings. "You and he are far too young to be dreaming such things. The Great Houses take only the skilled and the experienced. Tell the boy to focus on his studies."_

_Dineva leans forward on her haunches. Her leather bracelets and anklets have pressed red patterns in her skin. "Do you think we could do it one day? Become part of the circle, if we wanted?"_

_Vescen meets her gaze squarely. "With diligence, all is possible. Only the stars know what you will become. Age bestows us power, yet you two are still quite young." She lets out a gusty sigh, tucking the rug away atop a higher shelf. "I've heard words of your progress from your mentors. Shall I speak? Or…" A light chuckle escapes her. "Perhaps not, lest your egos grow and swell from these seeds."_

_Jai perks up. "No! No, tell us, Signorina! We'd like to hear it!"_

_"Please, Signorina!" Dineva tacks on._

_Again, Vescen does her tut-tutting, and snaps an old blanket in their direction like a whip. "Now, I think not, bambine. There will be no boasting and bragging amongst the children in our care. Now run along before I call upon Signor Hastian's good favor to fetch you!"_

_As she turns back to her cleaning, Jai and Dineva file out the door and into the chilly winds flowing above the path. "I'll race you to Faux's hideout!" Jai exclaims. Her feet are itching to move, to chase the cold away._

_Even though she's lost all the races they've ever run in the history of their friendship, Dineva smiles. Her teeth flash a sharp, brilliant white. "If you're so keen to lose!"_

_"No way!" she cries, but it's too late. The other girl is a golden-blonde blur taking the trial up the flowering hillside, footprints pounded deep into her wake—and even though Dineva's two-second head start can't possibly be fair in any world, Jai finds herself laughing, laughing, laughing away._

* * *

Jai doesn't really understand personal techniques.

She learned everything she knows by letting other people guide her. People who were older. Weaker. People who paled in comparison to her skills when it came to healing—but still taught her everything that they could, knowing she'd surpass them.

Flames are never a competition. Flames are never meant to be priced.

She wants to do the same, the whole passing-off-to-other-people thing. It would be kind of nice, she thinks, if her knowledge was carried from person to person, generation to generation, years and decades and centuries from today. Like bloodlines. Like stories.

So when Reborn comes up to her one day and asks about how her teleportation works, Jai closes the engrossing romance novel Bianchi let her read, and shows him how to do it himself.

"It's basically like travelling at the speed of light," she explains as they kneel together in Tsuna's backyard. "Naturally, your Flames are going to want to generate heat, which'll end up burning off your skin and your clothes if you don't pull it off right."

He smirks. Confident, as usual. "What do I have to do?"

Reborn's always a good learner. She works with him until he can manage the state between light and heat and matter. His tiny body shines like a second afternoon sun, and the air around him shimmers with the intensity of lava and volcanic plumes.

The only sacrifices are the surrounding grass patches, which coil up into brown sprigs, and his suit, which is singed at some corners. Not that you can really tell the difference on black fabric.

This is how Colonnello finds them. "What're you up to, Jai, bastard?" he asks as he toddles over.

Reborn smirks. The power _might_ be getting to his head. Just a little. "Come here, idiot. Give me a hug."

"What the hell…?"

Jai laughs. "Reborn, no!" She shifts her weight as Colonnello hops onto her shoulder. "You'll want to practice entering and leaving this state first before you pull your core around, otherwise you might burn yourself on accident when you actually teleport. And you have to be careful of your surroundings, too, and you need to make yourself really, really thin when you pull."

The hitman raises an eyebrow. Through the heat haze, it looks like a wiggling caterpillar at the top of his head. "Thin?"

"It'll make sense when you do it! Your body will get a…a thin feeling to it, I guess. There's no other good way to describe it."

Colonnello pats her cheek. His slanted cyan eyes meet her own. "You're teaching him how to teleport?"

"Sure am," Jai says as she gets to her feet. Meanwhile, Reborn flares his Flames until the emanating heat is as strong as a house-sized furnace. He looks pleased with himself.

"Huh. Okay." The Rain frowns. "Uh…hey, anyway, Jai. I've told you about Lal Mirch, right?"

Lal Mirch, Colonnello's maybe-girlfriend and member of a group called the CEDEF. From what Jai's heard, she used to be his tutor. Loves the color red, hates green peppers and shrimp, and apparently looks beautiful when angered. According to him.

Reborn says something muffled through the distortions.

"Speak up, kora!"

The heat waves around Reborn's body dwindle away. "I said, you never shut up about her."

A scowl. "Shut up yourself, bastard."

"You're the one who wanted me to speak up."

Colonnello turns back to her, completely ignoring his retort. "Anyway, Jai, I was thinking about inviting Lal over here sometime. I taught her how to do the Flame transfer thing, but I think you're definitely better at showing people this stuff compared to me. You don't mind, right?"

Jai lets out a startled laugh. "Oh, yeah! Sure! Why not? She's free to pop in whenever, just like you guys!"

"Awesome, kora!"

They bump fists.

Reborn's patience for both of them runs dry, and he reaches for Leon—who shrieks as his scales make contact with the hitman's smoldering fingers.

* * *

Jai sits in her usual playing chair after lunch hours, wiping down the neck of her shamisen with the polishing cloth, when bells chime and the door swings open.

"Jai, you in?"

"Right here, Colonnello!" she calls.

He strolls around the screen and over to her with another infant in tow. This one has stern sherry eyes. Black-blue hair. A sharp red mark biting her right cheek, from the edge of her eye all the way to her chin. She locks onto Jai with a firm, hard stare, kind of like the ones Reborn used to give her.

And her pacifier is—

Jai puts the shamisen down.

Her pacifier is grey. Like sword-steel and rain clouds. A single shade lighter than Jack's eyes. But it's the Flames inside it that matter most, because they're not like Colonnello's. They're a shadow.

She didn't think it was possible for Flames to be faded, to be so barely _there_ that she can hardly even tell that they're Rain. Strange.

"Lal, this is Jai." Colonnello grins at both of them. "Jai, this is Lal Mirch. She's the one I've been telling you about."

Lal Mirch nods. Smoothly. Confidently. "Pleasure."

"Yeah, nice to meet you!" Jai props her instrument up against the wall. The two infants follow her as she goes behind the counter. "Did you guys want to order something while we're here? Tsuyoshi's still hanging around in the back."

They exchange glances. "Lal?"

Lal Mirch rolls her eyes. Jai can see why Colonnello waxed all those compliments about her. She looks quite pretty, sharp-eyed and feminine, even with the scar and the baby fat packed into her face. "Didn't we have lunch on the plane?"

"But their sashimi—"

"We're fine, Jai," Lal Mirch says. A faint blush dots her cheeks at the sight of Colonnello's tearful expression, and her teeth bare into a small snarl. "Y-You moron, if you don't wipe that look off your face right now, I—"

He lifts his hands in a sign of surrender. "Alright, alright! Whatever you say!"

Jai can't help but laugh. They seem fun together. She likes the mood they've got going on.

Lal Mirch crosses her arms. They frame the grey pacifier dangling at her chest. "Let's move on. So, Jai." Her sherry eyes narrow. "You already know what I'm here for. When can we start?"

"Start what?"

She cocks an eyebrow. "Lessons."

"Oh, right! Whenever you want, really. We can start now if you're up for it!"

"Now?" Lal Mirch's face blanks. Carefully composed. She looks at Colonnello.

He sits down cross-legged. His grin flashes. "Go ahead, Lal! It's always fun to watch this sort of thing."

The other Rain rolls her eyes again. "Honestly…" She clears her throat and looks at Jai again. "Colonnello already taught me how to transfer Flames, but that's all I know. What are you going to show me first?"

There are tons of possibilities. "Whatever you want to start with. Can I see your Rain Flame, first?"

For some reason, Lal Mirch goes still. Stony. Her face may as well be carved out of solid ice. Unbreakable, unreadable. "I," she states, ignoring Colonnello's half-open mouth, "use Cloud and Mist Flames. Not Rain."

Hold up.

"Really?" Jai asks. Since, well. The pacifier.

"Yes," replies Lal Mirch. Her gaze is cold. "I _can't_ use my Rain Flame. There was a…mishap, several years back. I'm a Cloud and Mist user now." And she lifts her chin a little, as if that somehow explains everything. As if something like that is even possible.

_Hold up._

"I don't think that's how it works," Jai says, even as she takes Lal Mirch's hand and reaches out with her own sunlight and fire. After all, Flames can't be blocked. They can't be stemmed, either.

Flames are supposed to be _free._

Except Jai is wrong, apparently.

Lal Mirch's Rain Flames are sparkling, showering, magnificent drops. But they're faint. But they're shadows. Jai can reach in as deep as she wants and they'll still shy away from her touch, trickle past her Sun Flames and stay, deep in the Rain's core.

Her Cloud and Mist Flames are fine. Powerful, in their own right. But her Rain Flames are more, so much more. It's the energy that reflects herself, that embodies her as a whole. Like the shimmering of a pooling fountain, like the whispering of a riverside, and if they could just come out and stop _hiding_—

Jai coaxes and lunges and reaches further and further. Nothing happens. Her Flames are beautiful, though. And if they could just—

If they could just—

If they—

She drops Lal Mirch's hand and wonders what it's like, to lose that fine connection between the parts of yourself. It must be horrible. "Is there a way to fix it?" she asks.

Lal Mirch flexes her fingers once. Twice. "No." Her face softens. "I know what the cause is. It…It can't be cured."

Beside her, Colonnello looks away.

"Sorry for your loss," Jai says. Although, really, she doesn't have any experience with what she's feeling sorry for. She doesn't even know how an _accident_ could've caused this sort of thing.

Still, Lal Mirch gives her a pointed glance. "No need," she replies. Briskly. Efficiently. "You can work with my other Flames."

It goes to show that Lal Mirch isn't weak, nor discouraged. It's like she's moved past just another obstacle in life—simply stepped over another hurdle. The strength of that alone should make mountains topple and continents quake at her feet.

"Sure," Jai says.

And really, Jai likes her already.

* * *

On a mellow Sunday afternoon, Jai lies down on the patchy cushions littered across Takeshi's room, juggling erasers. "You're the worst student," she tells him for the fifth time that week.

Takeshi flops over onto his side. "This is my worst subject," he says. "How does Gokudera speak English like it's nothing? I mean, look at this—" The textbook almost slips out of his hands as he lifts it high into the air. "How come you don't put an 's' after '_sheep_' but you _do_ put an 's' after other words? Like, '_koalas'_? And _'bears'_? What's wrong with _'sheeps'? _Makes no sense, doesn't it?"

Her laughter bubbles up in her chest as she flicks an eraser in his direction. She gets rewarded by a little yelp. Score. "You don't pronounce _koalas_ like that! It's _koh-all-as_, not _coal-as_. Three syllables."

"Oh, okay. _Koalas_." He chuckles. "Man, but when am I ever going to need to use English?"

"Travelling? Vacationing in the States, or something? Or, you know, literally anywhere in the west?" Jai catches all five—or, four now—in her left hand, flips them one by one into her right. It's hard to juggle lying down. "I stayed with this one great family while I was in England. They have a kid a few years older than you—maybe I can introduce you one day? I feel like you'd get along!" She laughs. "I guess I'll take you ten years from now, when you can might actually be able to say a single word in English without botching up the whole—"

He snickers. "Fine, fine, I get it! Gotta try my best and everything, right?"

"You're still the worst student." Jai tosses another eraser in his direction for good measure.

_"You're_ still the worst motivational speaker anyone has ever—egh! Ow! Jai!"

She cackles as she rolls over, bringing a pillow along with her. His retaliating ball-point pens bounce harmlessly against it. "What was that noise?" she splutters. "That noise you just made? 'Egh'? What is _that?"_

"I don't—" He collapses into laughter, same as her. "Honestly—"

"No, wait, what's—what is _'egh'?_ It's either 'agh' or 'eh'—you don't just _combine_ them at the same time! What are trying to pull?" Jai reaches over to drop the rest of the erasers onto his back, laughing all the while. "Come on, keep—keep working on your homework! You're only, like, a quarter of the way through!"

Takeshi lets out a sound caught somewhere between a sigh, a wheeze, and a groan. "You're the one distracting me in the first place! Can't you bother Dad downstairs or something?"

She grins. "Actually, I was doing that before I came up here." Tsuyoshi got fed up with her and retreated into his book. Literally. He slapped the book over his face and stayed like that until she finally went upstairs. Morons, all of them.

The boy makes another weird noise. "How 'bout you go visit the kid?"

"Nah, he said to leave him and Tsuna's house alone for today. Something about a big training set-up for the mafia game."

"What about his friends? You can hang out with them, like usual."

"Viper and Fon are out of town, and the rest are getting roped along with whatever Reborn's doing."

Takeshi puffs up his cheeks and deflates them in a steady stream of air. "Well, do you wanna do the laundry for us?"

"You just did the laundry a week ago, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but have you seen Dad's basket? It's like he dumped his entire closet in there! And my uniform still looks like it got thrown into a mud puddle or something."

Jai groans and throws an arm over her eyes, but she doesn't really mean it. Takeshi knows that, too. "Alright, fine—I'll do the laundry. Stars, you're all hopeless."

"Great! Thanks, Jai!"

As she rolls over onto her stomach, a whim strikes. Her hands spread out next to her sides. She pushes herself upward, toes scraping the carpet. "Wait, Taketake, let's do push-ups first! Are you ready? Do them with me! Come on!"

He laughs. "Jai, get out of my _room_—"

"Let's go! Let's do this! Ready, Taketake? Alright, _one_—_two_—" Jai leaps to her feet before he can try to squash her by sitting on her back (yes, he was totally going to do that, look at his face). She dances out the door. "I'm going, I'm going!"

"Can you do darks before whites, too? Thanks! You're the best!"

The door shuts with a small click. Jai heads down the hall and heads for the laundry room, grinning to herself all the while. Takeshi is always fun.

She strolls in, whistling in her head.

And at the same time, a wasp flies in through the window.

But this isn't an ordinary wasp. It's huge. Gigantic. The size of her fist. Its glassy wings are the length of her fingers, and they flitter, like a hummingbird. The entire body is made of silvery metal.

And, really, with the polished coat and the jade bits for eyes, it would be quite a pretty-looking piece of metal—that is, if it didn't happen to take the shape of a massive wasp with a stinger the size of a syringe.

It clacks its tweezer-legs and swivels its orb eyes to stare at her. _"Good afternoon,"_ it says.

Oh.

Alright.

"Well, hi," she says.

_"My name is Verde. We're communicating through one of my own inventions, in case you're wondering."_ The voice filtering through the holes on its sides is male. Rough. Reedy. A constant crackle of static plays in the background. _"I'll cut straight to the point. I'm here to make you a deal."_

Jai snaps her fingers. That name, Verde. "Hey! The others have talked about you!"

Except the things they say about this Verde character usually tend to be insulting. Colonnello's mood sours at the mere mention of his name. Lal Mirch gets this incredibly disgusted look on her face. Reborn just takes on this particular kind of murderous intent that makes everyone else back off. But she's not going to mention any of that.

She wants to say 'nice to meet you' instead, but she can't really do that when she's talking to a wasp. So, moving on. "What kind of deal?"

_"According to my observations of you and the other Arcobaleno over the past week, you are the one responsible for the distinct spike in the Arcobaleno's collective combat abilities,"_ drawls the wasp, in the kind of tone people would use when telling children's stories to children while not actually wanting to be telling children's stories to children. _"You've been shown to hold a valuable wealth of information about Dying Will Flames and their properties. As a scientist and inventor, I would like to request your cooperation and your assistance in filling out my databases."_

Jai laughs. "What?"

A deliberate silence lapses. _"I said, I would like to request your cooperation and your assistance in filling out my databases."_

"What does that mean?"

_"I want you to assist me in my research. I have use of your knowledge on Dying Will Flames."_

"Oh. You want to know about Flames, basically."

_"Yes. Do you understand? Congratulations." _Ooh, that right there. That was a _smack_ in her direction. She's beginning to see how this Verde can come off as a dislikeable guy.

"And you're part of the same circle as Reborn and the rest, right? The Arcobaleno?"

Smooth steel slips into his tone. _"You could say that. But we are hardly allies."_

"Aha." Jai doesn't really understand the relationship between them and him, but she's beginning to get an idea. "So…wait. Okay, so you want to know stuff about Dying Will Flames. What for?"

_"To bring progress to the field of science and study, of course."_

"Cool! Do you want lessons, too? Like what the other guys are getting?"

_"I'm currently under the impression that these 'lessons' of yours are free, without any charges. Is that right?"_

"Sure is!"

_"Then yes, lessons would be helpful. What prices do you charge in regards to your information?"_

Jai rubs the back of her head. "I don't really need money or anything."

_"Anything else, then?"_ Verde reminds her of all those bored, dead-voiced telemarketers Tsuyoshi always tells her to hang up on. _"I can owe you a favor, or you can request something from my networks. If you happen to change your mind, I pay in yen as well as euro."_

Wait. Networks, he says. That sparks an idea.

Wouldn't it be neat, she thinks, if the mafia knew how to do the things she does? If she didn't have to be the only person in the world who could show them, if other people knew how to transfer and cohere, if knowledge of her techniques spread across the underground like some breathtaking wildfire—

She beams at the wasp. "Do you think it'd be possible for you to spread my information around to other people? Like, could you share the stuff I tell you with the rest of the mafia?"

_"Easy enough," _he says dismissively. His tone somehow manages to make her feel ant-like. Ant-like and buggy and small. _"If it means so much to you, I suppose I could 'share' your information through my contacts in a way that doesn't jeopardize my own experiments. Do we have a deal, then?"_

Well. That was rather fast.

"Yeah! Do we shake on it, or—"

_"No, that won't be necessary. You'll see me in person sometime soon. I'll be working with you in the future, and thus relying on our cooperation."_ Verde's wasp drifts back to the window. _"Also, a fair warning—my other inventions are currently recording the data for the other Arcobaleno's fighting abilities. Rest assured that none of them are in particularly lethal danger. Good day."_

With that, the voice and static shut off, and the wasp leaves in the same way it came—through the window, and all of a sudden.

Jai laughs. She doesn't really get what just happened. It's going to take a while to process. (Did she sell a piece of her soul or something? Who knows, really.)

But Verde must be the Lightning of their lot, since he can't possibly be a Sky. Out of all the Arcobaleno she's met, he's the sixth. The sixth one out of seven in their almost-complete circle. Their Sky is still missing.

Mysterious.

Anyway, darks before lights.

She scrapes a few pieces of lint out of the drying machine and goes to fetch Tsuyoshi's laundry basket.

* * *

Verde turns out to be an infant, just like the others. He has a wild mess of green hair, round glasses, and a spotless lab coat. His eyes are set deep into his head, and they stare back at the world in what looks to be a state of perpetual, never-ending disappointment.

His pacifier is almost difficult to look at. The branches of lightning inside that little orb are everywhere, all at once. They're buzzing and humming and running, moving at a speed she can hardly bear to see. The energy of those Flames is too much. Excessive.

Jai feels like she's watching a bomb. Like his pacifier will one day explode in a shock of green Flames that will cripple everyone and everything in its wake. It could go off any second now. Any hour. Any year.

The other infants, save for Viper and Fon, are almost incandescent with rage at the sight of him. _"You_ sent a whole _swarm_ of your pathetic robot wasps to attack us!" Lal Mirch snaps when Verde steps out of virtually nowhere onto Tsuna's sun-dappled front porch, laptop in one hand and a cup of steaming expresso in the other.

Jai thinks back to what he said before—something about recording data on their fighting abilities.

She is forced to come to the conclusion that Verde is kind of a jerk.

Or just a devoted scientist. The line is too blurry to tell.

Colonnello is even angrier than the rest of them. "I was playing Othello with Bianchi and _winning!"_ he snarls, almost frothing at the mouth. "Do you know how hard it is to play against her? Now I can't even use the same strategy anymore! Hell, now we can't even play the damn game, because your machines had to go ahead and break the board into splinters!"

Sitting off to the side, Fon and Viper exchange glances. "You were _winning?"_ they ask in perfect tandem with each other. Which is a first.

"Wait, the board _broke?"_ Skull asks, sounding horrified.

Verde takes on an air of affronted disbelief. "It's not like you were in any danger in the first place. Those little bugs were malfunctioning prototypes. I just found a good way to put them to use." He rolls his eyes when Reborn lifts his gun. "Trying to kill me now would not be the smartest idea, Reborn, seeing as I have a deal to complete with your tutor."

Jai breathes out a puff of white air. "Right, right. That deal."

"What deal," Reborn says.

He, along with everyone else, turns to look at her. She braces herself for a slow, painful death.

But a slow, painful death never comes (instantaneous pain does, though), and she manages to convince the others to keep Verde intact long enough for her to show him the whole process of transferring Flames. "Absolutely fascinating," he mutters, scribbling something down on a notepad. While typing up a storm on his laptop. While drinking down the rest of his expresso. While holding a handful of Sun Flames. Impressive.

Jai thinks there's something rather off about him. Not wrong, not unsettling. Just _off._

It's the same feeling she gets when she watches Sawada Nana cut her apples with a butter knife and cut up slices of butter using a cleaver. It's the feeling of seeing something un-centered, teetering slightly off to the side.

Off-ness.

He sees things differently. When she passes her Flame to him, he focuses on the inner workings. The mechanics of it. How the energy can be passed from one person to another while still transferred but somehow detached from the receiver yet caught in a state that forces the hibernation of its attributes—and he goes on and on, mumbling to himself, and thinking instead of feeling.

Verde isn't _feeling_.

However, the scientist is smart. He's a genius. He'll keep his end of the deal. So Jai reads the charts and documents scrawled into his notebooks and etched into his laptop screen—which ends up leading to all sorts of interesting discoveries—and tells him about Flames.

The information they give to each other is fascinating.

"Each type of Flame has a force," she says as he types away on his laptop on the roof of Tsuna's house. Reborn and Fon are sitting next to her, listening in. "The Sky Flame, for instance, is the balancer. The Sun Flame is the rejuvenator. You know about that, right?"

"Harmony, Disintegration, Tranquility, Activation, Hardening, Propogation, and Construction," he lists off, jade eyes glinting. "Those are the seven attributes associated with Dying Will Flames."

"Yeah, sounds close enough. But why are there seven forces? Why does each one do different things? 'Course, if you follow that line of thought, you're going to end up at the most important question of all—what are Flames, really?" Jai pauses, trying to figure out how to put this without a single mention of the Trinisette.

Verde leans forward. "Dying Will Flames are, in their basic form, condensed energies of a person's Wave Energy."

"Right—Wave Energy, which is basically your life force, or your core. Your soul, some people say. And why is it that these creations called Flames, born from your own life and will, have specific qualities in the first place? Because isn't it strange, how they're divided into seven different types in the first place?"

Jai draws a circle on a scrap piece of paper. "Let's say this is our world, planet Earth—the only world with sentient life on par with ours as far as we can see. Right?"

"Right," Fon murmurs. His eyes are narrow, burning into the page.

"Around this world, within this world, surrounding this world, we have energies. Seven energies—or rather, six and one." Jai draws six smaller circles around the boundaries of the Earth-circle, and a single circle in the middle. "Six energies and one combination of the six, to balance the planet. And they have forces and properties and _unique qualities_, you see, because literally every form of energy that exists naturally on Earth can fall into one of the six 'categories'."

She shades the circles in. "I don't remember how it works, but basically, these energies exist on a separate field. It's all in a space that goes in some sort of different dimension that's still parallel to ours. And this dimension, or space or field or whatever, is where our own Flames are stored. That's why you can't cut our physical bodies open and find our Flames hanging around inside—because they're in a second body, a second layer, on this second dimensional plane where everything is just full of vibrating energy."

She smiles and taps her pencil against the rooftop. "Anyway, everything's about balance. Keeping it and maintaining it, so that Earth can exist as it does, and life can continue as you know it. People are born with different Flames because of that, to keep that balance. Do you get what I'm talking about, or should I explain?"

Verde stares unseeingly at her face for a few moments. "In 2002, the Chiavi Famiglia came up with a theory," he says slowly, "which stated that, judging from the percentages calculated within the mafia and the numbers of those factors multiplied to reach worldly population standards, the number of people inclined to a certain type of Dying Will Flame is exactly the same for every type of Flame. Meaning that there are the same number of Storm users as Cloud users, and Cloud users as Sun users, and so on and so forth. Is that…"

Jai claps her hands. "Exactly! It's a true theory! We, as living beings, are all unconsciously working to keep the balance of the six-and-one energies that keep our old universe moving."

Fon and Reborn look stunned. Intrigued. Verde mutters under his breath, thoughts turning over and over inside his head.

And through Verde, Jai learns about the importance of physical objects. Rings, specifically. "The majority of the mafia world uses rings to convert their Wave Energy into Dying Will Flames," he explains. "Most people can't have their Flames manifest at full power without using a ring. Rings also help people have better control over their Flame techniques."

"Yeah?" Jai frowns. "Huh. Okay. Objects can be pretty good at channeling energy, but I didn't think it would be, like, a common practice or anything."

Verde throws a few diagrams into her hands. "Wave Energy flows through a system inside the human body that is almost parallel to the cardiovascular system. The digital veins and arteries within the hand carry the highest concentrations of Wave Energy due to the nature of the cycling energy itself. In other words, the hands are the most important parts of the body in that aspect."

She hums. "There was an explanation for that, I think, in the form of a story. But I don't remember it too well."

It was about a boy and a girl who shared the same body, but had different minds. When they finally drank a potion that let them separate, there were strings tying each of their fingers together, and each one was a different color. Jai doesn't remember how it ends.

"How do you know all this?" Reborn asks. "What are your sources?"

"My mentors," Jai replies. She sees the glint in Verde's eyes and laughs. "Sorry, Verde! They're gone, so you can't really find them anymore. But they were definitely reliable guys!"

Verde cocks an eyebrow. "Did they take on other students?" He taps his chin. "No, let me rephrase that. Are you the only person who knows about these theories of yours?"

"I think so."

He pulls out a thick black book from his tiny little pocket and tosses that into her lap, too. "Read that," he orders. "It's my newest project. I want to hear anything that could possibly contribute to the concepts."

Jai opens it to a random page. Every single spot on the canvas is covered with writing. Details and descriptions. Calculations for diagrams with each line sketched flawless, and even though she doesn't get what it's about at first glance, she's still impressed on the spot.

Verde sips his coffee. "Well?"

"You know what, Verde?" she says, skimming through the drawings of machines and statistical numbers and charts. The whole thing is absolutely profound. "This is going to be _so much fun."_

* * *

The walk from Takesushi to her apartment is peaceful in the evening. Jai skirts around the fresh puddles shimmering with stop-light refractions. The scent of wet pavement isn't a good smell, but there's something nice about how familiar it is—how she can taste the scent and immediately conjure up the image to go with it. Starry skies. Cars rolling past the crosswalks.

A weight thumps down on her left shoulder. "Jai."

She turns her head, finds a familiar burn mark and a pair of easy eyes. "Oh, hi, Lal Mirch!"

As they round the corner and head downhill, Lal Mirch places a hand on the side of her head to steady herself. A faint frown crosses her face. "Do you…mind? Or should I…"

"Mind what?" Jai pauses, realization dawning. "Oh, no, not really. Colonnello hitches a ride a lot, too. So do most of them 'cept for Viper. You're all good!"

"I see." The Rain gazes ahead—possibly at the long line of lamplights stretching into the distance, soft on the snowy tiles of concrete. "I'm beginning to see what Reborn meant, when he said those things about you."

She laughs. "Wait, what'd he say? That I have comfy shoulders or something?"

A silent snort. "No. It's nothing much." Lal Mirch's eyes slide over to the pedestrians on the other side of the street. Watchful. Always watchful. "He said there's something about you—something that's just…"

Jai waits five seconds. "What?"

"I…no. Nothing."

"Oh." Her boots splash into a dip in the sidewalk. She takes a deep breath of crispy air, tinted with smoky dust and barbeque wafting from the restaurant next to them. "Did you want to talk about something?"

Lal Mirch lets out a silent sigh that cools against her ear. "What do you know about us?"

"About—"

"The Arcobaleno. Us, as a group."

Jai hums. "Not much, I guess? I know you guys are all two-year-olds, apparently. The strongest infants in the mafia. And you have these strange pacifiers around your necks that probably symbolize something, but I don't know what. That's about it."

"They didn't tell you anything else?"

"Nah." They cross at an intersection of colorful lights. Dazzling. Dancing. "I asked Reborn about the pacifiers once, when I first met him. And I've asked Fon and Skull about why your bodies are like that." She remembers the way their faces smoothed out, all of a sudden. Expressions wiped clean off before she could even blink. "It's not a nice subject for you guys, I don't think. And Skull said it was something like a secret. So I just leave it alone."

"You're not curious?"

"A little. But secrets are important." Jai looks at Lal Mirch again. "Why d'you ask?"

The Rain's eyes dart back to hers. "It's curious. The Arcobaleno have never…come together like this. Years ago, we wouldn't even have dreamed of…" She shakes her head. Banishing memories, maybe. "You've gathered all of us, excluding Aria. I didn't think it was possible."

Was their circle broken, some time ago? Strange. It's not like they don't get along or anything. Jai thinks they're all pretty good friends with each other these days.

Even if Viper harbors some sort of deep resentment for Fon that makes her wonder if Fon insulted Viper's family at some point. Even if the rivalry between Reborn and Colonnello isn't all that great for the total cost of damage repairs done on Tsuna's house, even with insurance. Even if literally no one gets along with Verde.

They still make a wonderful circle.

So she beams at the Rain and says, "It's not bad, is it?"

"No, it's not." Lal Mirch blinks quickly a few times. Surprised. Thoughtful. "It's…not bad."

"Good!" Jai exclaims, and laughs. "That's good! Do you think I'm ever going to meet your Sky?"

The Rain's lips twitch into a dry semblance of a smile. "I don't think so. Aria's busier than the rest of us. She has her own famiglia to run, the Giglio Nero. I have a feeling she would like you, if you ever get the chance to meet her."

"Would I like her, too?"

Lal Mirch shrugs. "Most people do. Aria is…a kind woman."

Jai nods to herself. "I'll visit her one day, then. That'll be fun!"

"You can do what you want." A small noise, with the traces of a laugh inside it. Her voice drops into barely a murmur. "But it's really not bad at all, is it?"

She sounds awed. Sad, too.

"Lal Mirch?" Jai asks, but the baby is already gone, and her shoulder feels a few pounds lighter than before. She stalls in mid-step as the fluttery wing of a maroon cloak flashes up the sign of the nearby store. The Rain disappears, gone in a flash over the rooftops.

Jai stares skyward for a while, wondering what Lal Mirch meant. What Aria is like. What the Arcobaleno are.

They remind her of the Trinisette, with all their rainbow colors. Just a little. Just a bit.

The sky sparkles with cold, clear stars.

She keeps walking.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** at this point it's just like, hey, let's throw all these arcobaleno into one GIANT SALAD BOWL (and let the world recognize that i cannot write verde (or yamamoto) for the life of me). we're now on the winding road leading up to the varia arc, aka the second section/arc of the story overall.

thank you very much for your absolutely amazing reviews and your continuous support for the story! (the influx of new readers seems to be due to a couple people (7isthemagicnumber and cywscross, i believe) promoting my work—thank you for your appreciation!)


	9. Silver

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** 'home' by edward sharpe and the magnetic zeros is one of those songs that fits this story to a t like you guys don't even _know_. anyway there's three chapters left until the varia arc adios mi amigos

* * *

9\. SILVER

* * *

_"I can't believe she's leaving."_

_Jai peers at the horizon, a long strip of empty plains freckled with tree-dots. She scrapes at the juicy part of the apple with her teeth, where the flesh is yellow-white instead of green, and digs her toes into the loose bark of the branch. It peels off easily. "Do you see the caravan?"_

_Crouched on the neighboring tree, Faux's gaze rakes across the distance. "Nobody can, I'll bet. Maestro Bethtya is doing their cover." He shoots her a glance. "But I'm going to see through his works one day! I've already sworn it!"_

_She waits for the breeze to pass before tossing the apple to him. "Signor Bethtya's our best illusionist," she says while he takes a bite._

_"Exactly! But now I can't gloat to Dineva about ever surpassing him, can I? Not when she's gone with fleet-foot _Chyde_, as his _apprentice_—"_

_"You're only jealous because—" Jai giggles at the scowl he gives her. "Because she gets her journey earlier than you."_

_He scrunches his nose and tosses the apple over. "I dislike Chyde."_

_"Signor Chyde is a good mentor. Signorina Vescen was pleased with him."_

_"Why do you defend him? He stole away our best dancer, and now all the festivals will be dull without her! I'm never going to forgive him!"_

_The conversation halts as a strong breeze blows through the treetops. It howls a quivering note, scattering leaves and scrappy twigs. She looks down at the trunk of the tree—a mossy tower stretching thousands of hands away from the earth, spotted with ivy._

_Jai licks at the chunk of apple between her teeth. "It's okay," she says. "We'll see Dineva again one day. And besides, you're going to visit far more places than she will." She throws the fruit. "You promised, didn't you?"_

_Faux laughs. His shiny teeth are near invisible against his pale, pale face. "I did, yes! You're coming with me, too, remember? We're going to be famous world travelers together!"_

_Another giggle leaves her. "But…if you join the House of Berina, and I join the Vernai with—with Maestro Prithia, we might be too busy to—"_

_"I don't care—we'll do both! I'll _always_ keep my promises. Unlike Dineva, anyway." He chews around a mouthful of apple, squeezing droplets of juice out of his lips. "Our journey will be fantastic! We're going to see the Great Desert, and—and climb mountains, and _conquer seas_, and…" He pounds the branch beneath his knees with a loose fist. "Argh, I really wish I could see that caravan! The beast girl is probably laughing at us right now! I _know_ she is!"_

_Jai looks at the green horizon once more. "I wish we didn't have to hide the caravans at all," she says as the thought passes by. It's only a casual remark._

_Faux shrugs his bony shoulders. "I know. But it can't be helped, can it?" He turns his head to look at her, silver eyes serious. His grin, on the other hand, is devilish. "Loch says our Flames are special, and Verona's men are simply _seething_ with envy."_

_She rolls her eyes. "Loch is silly. You shouldn't listen to him." Her fingers dig into the tree branch. "I just wish it wasn't such a big deal, is all."_

_He tilts his head, fluffy hair falling everywhere. Their shared apple spins around in his deft fingers, while the trees groan deep and low in the morning breeze. "Too bad, isn't it?" he says._

_"Too bad," she agrees._

* * *

Jai sees the girl in the marketplace, trying to buy a salmon fillet.

The air reeks of fish and sweet salt. People bustle around them in snippets of loud clothes and bright chatter. The girl leans over one of the clear casings with an intense look in her eyes—no, eye—while sweeping her gaze across her surroundings once in a while, like Lal Mirch does whenever she meets Jai in public.

Jai goes over to her side. The squids are laid out next to the salmon, anyway, and Tsuyoshi wants two of them to clean and deep-fry as a snack. "Get the thicker ones," she says.

The Mist blinks up at her. Her single eye looks like a brilliant jewel.

"The thick fillets are tastier." Jai points to the good ones behind the case. "Like those, you see? If you don't mind the extra fat and oil, bigger fillets always end up tasting ten times better."

Slowly, the girl nods. She calls one of the workers over with a shaky arm and points to the fattest fillet. The glint of yen catches Jai's eye, along with the wad of cash shoved into the pocket of the girl's skirt. Hastily, it seems. She must've been in a hurry.

_Thank you_, the girl mouths to her. Her voice is lost in the general hubbub of the market.

"Sure thing," Jai says.

As the fillet gets handed back to her in a neat little bag, the Mist backs out of the scene, her head bowed, shoulders hunched—and Jai grabs hold of her arm, her stick-thin arm, and grounds her in place. "Hold up," she says.

The girl stares at her. Tense. Apprehensive. The veins in her wrist twitch against the heel of her hand.

But—

This is no ordinary girl.

Jai pulls her forward a little, gazing at the shrouded world inside her. At the endless waves of indigo dust swirling throughout her body, beating in the same rhythm as her blood, her bone. The Flames coiled in her torso are familiar. Too familiar.

"How's Rokudo?" she asks.

The girl jerks back, but her strength is like an ant's compared to Jack. Her eye grows round. "I…What?"

Jai tugs her away from the row of fish, out of the crowds. They stumble over to an empty space between fruit stands. A scarlet canopy flutters over their head. "You have his Flames inside your body," she tells the girl. "Who are you, anyway?"

"Dokuro…Chrome." The girl recoils. "How do you know Mukuro-sama? I…I thought Chikusa and Ken were the only…"

Jai raises her eyebrows. "Wait, wait, wait. I know Rokudo because he was trying to kill a few friends of mine. Are you one of his own?"

Dokuro gapes at her. "You…"

If she says anything else, Jai doesn't hear her—because her intuition is screaming. Something sharp and silver whistles in a distant corner of the world. She pushes Dokuro away, but it's not aiming for the girl. No, it's—

Jai twists her head to the side—not fast enough. The needle slices a long, deep gash straight through one of her eyelids.

The pain is burning. Her vision blurs in jarring fragments, red and black and violet. It hits her left eye. Pierces right through the canal.

The thing is poisoned at the tip, too. Fantastic.

With a hissing breath that sounds like a steam kettle, Jai reaches up and lets her Sun Flames pull the shredded retina together, pull the canal taut, pour the fluid in. The pain spiking in her nerves settles into a searing heat. She blinks her eye open again as the skin of her eyelid stretches back in place.

At first, the world is a jumbled mess of white light and red canopies. Jai blinks twice, and things slide into place.

Dokuro stands in front of her. She is smiling.

But she is no ordinary girl, and that is no ordinary smile. There's a second presence pulsing in her Flames. Grand. Alive. _Synchronized. _It's like looking at two reflections in a mirror.

"Hello, Jai," Rokudo says. "I didn't expect to see you here."

It seems like a bad idea to take her eyes off him now, but she can't help but glance to her left, where the needle came from. Nothing but piles of persimmons. The hedgehog kid must be lingering around somewhere over there, though. "Hi," Jai says as she turns back to him. "You know, I'm pretty sure you're supposed to be in Vendicare."

Which makes their presence here a nice surprise, actually. Still, there's no doubt this is going to cause some problems.

Rokudo tilts his head. "Did you really think such a measly prison would be able to stop me from accomplishing my goals?"

She lets out a startled laugh. "It hasn't even been a month, and you've already broken out of that place twice? I mean, either you're just super hardcore, or the Vindice really need to step up their game and—"

"I can't talk to you like this for long, I'm afraid." The Mist's smile widens. "Possessing this vessel of mine for any long period of time is no easy task. So I'll make this quick." He steps forward. Menacingly. "Why did you try to take us from the Vindice?"

Oh, right. He saw some of that, didn't he?

Jai rubs her aching eye and wonders what he thought of it—wonders what kind of answer he's looking for. "Well, I liked you guys more than I liked them."

Rokudo smirks. "Is that so?" His fingers curl around the invisible length of a trident. "How utterly foolish. You can't possibly expect me to believe that."

She laughs. "No, no, really! The Vindice scared me! I had no idea what was going to happen to you!" After all, Vendicare must not be a kind place. Not with Jack and his people in charge, with all their chains and black Flames in horrifying glory. "So I figured, hey, why not go ahead and give the duel a shot? Except it really didn't work out in the slightest, you know, but—"

"Chikusa and Ken have told me that you claimed false guardianship over us." A hint of bulging disbelief forms in his voice. Mixed with irritation. Impatience. "_Guardianship_, all for the sake of going against the Vindice's forces."

"Oh, yeah. I did that."

His smirk falls into a frown. "For what purpose?"

Good question.

Especially considering that Fuuta still has nightmares over his possession, Takeshi's arm was almost torn into pieces, Fon's relative suffered through black bruises and a disease running rampant through his blood, and Tsuna had to watch his friends turn against him with broken bodies and smiles. All because of Rokudo.

Especially considering that Jai actually had a _miniscule_ silver of a chance of getting custody over the boys, and if she had succeeded—well. Who knows what would've happened?

So. A very good question.

She wants to tell him he reminds her of an old friend, but Rokudo wouldn't know how important that is to her. Besides, he and Faux are a little bit different. They hate the same, and they need the same, but Faux is a story long gone, stored in fragments in the years her memory allows. Rokudo is something new.

The clamor of the market resounds around them and a breeze blows back the wisps of hair around her face. "It's nice to have a home, sometimes," she settles on saying.

Rokudo sneers. "You were lying about your intentions to take us into your House. Don't bother denying it."

"Well, true. And it's not like you'd let me have any sort of responsibility over you guys anyway." She twists her mouth, trying to find the right words. Her reply feels lacking, somehow. It's hard to make him understand. "But you should go home sometime, Rokudo. It'll be good, you know, if you do. And if you don't have one, then—"

"Then nothing." His smile is near perfect. Only one corner is pulled up a fraction of an inch higher than the other. "I will bring the mafia to its knees, and if you think you have the power to stop me—"

"Then come home, Rokudo," Jai finishes. "If you don't have one, _come home. _Because there's really nothing stopping you, if you could just take a step back and _see_ that—"

His eye narrows, even as the rest of his face goes carefully blank. "We're finished here."

This time, she's prepared for the needles that whizz past her cheeks and shoulders. They bury themselves into the wall behind her in a silvery flurry and a thousand little noises. _Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat._

When Jai turns back, the girl—Rokudo or Dokuro or both or neither—is gone. The bag of salmon lies discarded on the ground.

* * *

She learns the story behind it later, in bits and pieces.

"Another breakout was staged at Vendicare Prison a week ago," Viper tells her as they watch Colonnello teach Sasagawa how to draw out his Flame. The Mist bites into one of Nana's gingerbreads, which spill over the plate in the center of the dining table. "Mm…Two convicts escaped—Kakimoto Chikusa and Joshima Ken. Not Rokudo Mukuro, though. He's been moved to the lower levels of Vendicare."

Jai chews around her fifth cookie of the day. Through the screen of the back door, she can see Sasagawa's head erupt into a ball of yellow fire. Both he and Colonnello look pleased—they seem to get along pretty well. "Rokudo said something about using a vessel. Maybe he can possess people while he's still in prison?"

Viper rolls his eyes at the pair outside. "There's no other explanation for it. It should be impossible, to have that control over a person miles and miles away, but if his connection to the vessel is strong enough—" He shoots her a glance. Indistinguishable. "You said the girl had his Flames inside her body?"

"Yeah, it was weird. I didn't have a lot of time to figure it out, but it was like…his Flames weren't hers, but they were a part of her. If that makes sense." She hands him another gingerbread. Each one is as big as his face, but he's still scarfing them down. Then again, everyone is in love with Sawada's cooking.

He feeds a piece of it to a fattening Fantasma. "One of her body parts might be an illusion, then."

"Ohhh. Wait, really?"

"It would be logical. If Rokudo's providing the girl, then she'll most likely have agreed to serve his purposes to repay that debt. I've seen a few exchanges like those."

"You're right," says Reborn as he steps out of nowhere onto the dining table. "Dokuro's organs are made from his Mist Flames."

"Hey, Reborn!" Jai grins at the hitman as he saunters over to them. She hands him a gingerbread. "Cookie?"

Reborn takes it and nibbles at the edge of the star shape, his eyes zeroing in on the backyard. "How are those two doing?"

Viper sniffs. "That boy's going to blow his own head off."

They look on. Sasagawa finally puts out the fire on his face and sets his fists alight instead. Colonnello's rifle jabs at the Sun's stomach.

Jai laughs. "Looks fine to me!"

"He'd learn much easier if _you_ were the one teaching him, woman."

"Maybe. Colonnello's not a bad tutor, though. Even if he doesn't think so." She thinks back to their previous conversation. "Anyway, Reborn, how do you know about Dokuro?"

The hitman devours his—what is that, his seventh cookie already? Incredible. "I checked out Kokuyo Land. It looks like Mukuro's subordinates are hanging around there, as well as his new vessel."

"They returned to that place?" Viper scoffs. "That's the best way to get yourself found. What are you going to do with them?"

"Nothing, for now. They might be useful later. Mukuro won't make a move until he's certain he can defeat Tsuna again, which won't be happening at his current level and position."

Jai straightens in her seat and pulls her crossed legs tighter. "Hey, so they're in Kokuyo Land? Can I visit them?"

Reborn's gaze meets hers. "Why would you?"

"I have to return Dokuro's salmon. She dropped it in the market earlier."

Viper coughs over the gingerbread. "Don't be stupid," he snaps. "They're going to try to kill you. They already have."

"It's not like they actually _can_," Jai points out. Which might be an egocentric thing to say, but it's true.

Besides, the House of Vernai rarely backed down on their word. If they said they'd take custody over the kids, they'd take custody over the kids—convicts or not, murderers or not. Of course, the House doesn't really exist anymore, but Jai can't just leave them alone, anyway. Not after hearing their story.

She'll visit them. If not for their own well-being, then for her own restless conscience. That works, too.

* * *

Jai doesn't take any more than three steps onto the crumbling grounds of the second floor before the wild child—Joshima—tries to pounce on her. Teeth bared. Eyes frantic. His claws and skin flash in front of her eyes, and she twists around just in time to have him crashing into the doorframe.

Then, a hand shoots out of nowhere, needle glinting between its fingers. It slices against the side of her neck.

Poison, again.

Her Sun Flames leap into action, soothing the burn. Meanwhile, Jai slams her shoulder against the needle-boy's chest, driving him further against the wall. She pins his arms down with her own glowing ones, glances up, and—

The needle-boy looks _terrible._

"What the hell are you doing here, lady?!" Joshima snarls, his back arching inward. "Let Kaki-pi go!"

"Firstly, I gotta return your salmon," Jai says, glancing between him and the wild child. Dokuro is standing next to their fridge, both hands gripping a spear of sorts.

She's surprised they even have a fridge. The electricity for that is probably stolen.

Jai frees one hand to toss Dokuro the bagged salmon. The Mist fumbles with it for a moment.

"So let's get some things straight," she says. Because, man. These kids look completely beat-up. They shouldn't even be standing, and here they are, trying to be all mean and aggressive on her. It isn't working as well as it could be.

The needle-boy—Kakimoto—grinds his jaw for a moment. "Release me."

There's a weird inflection in his voice she can't quite place. From this close, every inch of his face has a certain clarity to it—the scabbed scratch next to his mouth. Black lines on his cheek. Specks of dirt stuck to what little forehead she can see beneath midnight bangs and that white hat of his.

She looks over at Joshima again. He seems ready to tear her limbs right off her body. "No, let's be serious here," she says, "because I'm not the mafia, I'm not the Vongola, and grudges aren't my thing. I'm not going to kill you, and it'd be great if you didn't try to kill me. Do we have a deal?"

"We can't trust you," Kakimoto rasps. His thighs push back against her knees, but—nope. He's not getting away, especially in his condition.

Jai huffs a laugh. "I didn't fight Jack just so I could stab you in the back later, you know."

The growl rumbling in Joshima's throat silences. Dokuro shifts nearer to them. Kakimoto's mouth thins.

She studies the lines drawn around his eyes. They're heavy. Ragged-run. "Right, so I'm going to heal you now. Just work with me, yeah?"

The transformation he undergoes is quite a sight. His dim eyes grow bright, arms and legs tense up like steel cords ready to snap—"What?" he asks.

"What?" Joshima repeats.

She presses her free hand in the center of Kakimoto's stomach. "Don't move," she warns him as her Sun Flames pour into the wounds scattered around his body.

He's a complete wreck. Broken wrist, bone fragments shattered in three. Cut near his ribs, near infection. Pulled muscle in his arm. Pant leggings stained brown from the burns and lacerations beneath. Jai makes a few new strings for his tendons, sews tissues, cleans bones. His Rain Flame pulses against hers, twitchy and undone. Unraveled.

"What am I missing?" she asks. Her hold has relaxed just enough for him to wriggle away, but he doesn't seem to be paying attention to it.

His eyes widen a full millimeter. "On…my back, there's…"

Jai moves his hands over, feeling for the spot. The skin and flesh is totally wrecked. She whistles. "And you could still walk around with this? Man, you're pretty hardcore, you know that?"

Joshima steps forward, snarling. _"Stop—"_

"Ken, wait." Kakimoto shudders as the warmth seeps from his skin. His eyes flicker around her face. "Why?"

Jai pulls away. Nobody tries to attack her. Whew. "You know, that whole thing about guardianship and jurisdiction or whatever between me and the Vindice?" she says, which makes all of them pause. "I winged it, all of it. The House of Vernai doesn't really exist anymore, and Rokudo never agreed to join it. I lied through the whole thing."

Joshima looks baffled. "Yeah, but—but why are you _here_ and—"

"'Cause you're Rokudo's buddies, I guess. You can also think of it as an apology. For lying and all." She claps her glowing hands together. "C'mere, Joshima! You're getting healed whether you like it or not!"

Apparently, that's the wrong thing to say. The boy curls his lip, a wild glint in his eye. "Hell no! I'm not owing you anything, you crazy lady! Get the hell out of—"

Jai leaps forward.

Surprisingly, as she wrestles with Joshima on the floor and his wounds—fractured ribs, twisted ankle, bruises circling his waist—fade away at her fingertips, neither Kakimoto nor Dokuro try to stop her.

* * *

Dokuro is a strange one. She sits in the corner of the room with her knees drawn to her chest, fiddling with her fingernails. She rarely speaks. Not to Jai, not to her comrades. Her movements are always stiff, like she isn't entirely sure of being in her own body.

The girl is young. Small. With her petite arms and legs folded inward like that, and with a face like hers, she looks kind of—_cute._

But no, not really. Dokuro doesn't seem to _want_ to look cute. It's just that her default attitude is set at 'timid'. And yet her Flames are as big and powerful as Rokudo's. Similar, but different. Just like Tsuna and his sky, she hides an entire landscape of rolling mist inside her.

Dokuro reminds her of a cornered kitten. She acts like a cornered kitten. But this isn't some small, fragile animal. She looks lame and acts generally miserable, drenched in the dark side of the world, but then Jai takes a peek at the Flames in this girl and—wow.

Appearances are incredibly deceiving.

Jai isn't fine with this. With her. The Mist's wrists are thin. Her face is gaunt. From malnutrition, restless sleep, and possibly abuse. Not physical. No, maybe some physical, but mostly mental.

She's also not fine with the way the other two are acting. Really, this is a problem.

"Why don't you make any sense?" Joshima snarls during her third visit. "You healed us, you fought the Vindice for us—what the hell are you scheming, anyway? What're you trying to gain?!"

Jai has no idea how to respond to that. She doesn't hang out with anyone for the sole purpose of gaining anything.

"What use are we to you?" Kakimoto asks, leaning against the wall with his hands shoved into his pockets.

Again, the weird questions. "Nothing at all, actually," she replies.

"You're lying."

But Jai isn't lying. These guys make her feel completely out of the loop. Every response she gives feels _weak_. Like she's playing the wrong game, or there are rules she doesn't know about.

Kakimoto stares coldly at the far wall, ignoring her. Joshima seethes with unbridled hatred. Dokuro runs her fingers over the scratched floor in the corner, watching, watching.

This is a problem that needs to be fixed.

* * *

Joshima hates her with a burning, sizzling, sun-like intensity, and nobody can deny it. The other two are content with just tolerating her. It's expected, but also strange—Jai has never been despised so much or brushed off so easily in her entire life. It's not a good feeling.

So she goes and gets help.

"What's the Vongola doing here?!"

Takeshi's eyes flicker across the room as he steps through the doorway. "Wow, this place looks pretty cozy!" He chuckles. "You have a couch and a stove and everything!"

"Good morning, guys!" Jai adds, dancing past him over to the couch. She glances at a bristling Joshima. "What's the hedgehog up to?"

He clenches his hands into fists. "That's none of your business! Why did you bring the Vongola here? We're not—" His own breath seems to cut him off. In the back, Dokuro rises to her feet. "We're not _surrendering_ to you weaklings!"

Takeshi gives him his best puzzled smile. "What are you talking about? I'm just admiring your place!" Another laugh. "Are you talking about the mafia game? Because it was pretty fun, fighting you back then! You have a real mean swing!"

Joshima makes the sound of a dying gazelle.

"Oh, you must be Chrome-san!" The Rain bows at the girl, who takes a hesitant step backward. "It's nice to meet you! Jai told me a little bit about you guys already. I'm Yamamoto Takeshi!"

After a few seconds, Dokuro gives a small bow of her own. A tiny smile graces her lips. "Nice to meet you."

The wild child rounds on her. His fury is quite a sight. "Don't act like that around the enemy, you stupid girl!"

Her eye widens. "N-No, Ken, it's…it's fine." She flutters her hands in Takeshi's direction. "Mukuro-sama…Mukuro-sama is saying it's okay, because...getting to know Decimo's Guardians is going to be—be beneficial in the long run, and if we have them let their…" She trails off.

With a low growl, Joshima spits at the ground. Most of his ire lifts off his shoulders.

Takeshi laughs, glancing between the two of them. "You guys seem like fun! So what's this Mukuro guy like? I heard Tsuna fought him once. Is he scary?"

Jai leans back, watching the kids wage verbal war with each other.

Well, she thinks. Here's a solution.

* * *

"Oh, Ken! Have you given any thought about joining Namimori's boxing club? You would be an EXTREMELY good boxer!"

"Like hell I will! Is there more of your skull in your head than your actual brain?!"

"We could use a strong spirit like you!"

"It's probably a lame-ass club, isn't it?! Defeating you back then was pathetically easily!"

"Is that a challenge from man to man? Because if it is, I accept TO THE EXTREME!"

"What the fuck is your problem?!"

"Senpai, you wanted chocolate milk, right?"

"Oh, yeah. Thanks, Yamamoto!"

Jai wheezes, sprawled over the couch. Her lungs ache with a passion. "Takeshi—" She breaks off into another fit of laughter as the argument in the background ascends in a marvelous crescendo. "Hey, Takeshi! You—You wanna get me a glass, too?"

"Sure!" The refrigerator door closes. "Chrome-san, do you want any?"

"Yes, please."

Jai looks up as a familiar white cap stalls next to her. Kakimoto stares at the scene unfolding behind her with a sort of soul-deep pain. "Why," he says. It's not a question.

"Sasagawa's a great guy," she replies. With feeling.

"ARM-WRESTLE WITH ME TO THE EXTREME, JOSHIMA KEN!"

"YOU WANNA GO, HUH?! I'M GONNA TEACH YOU A LESSON! KAKI-PI, GET OVER HERE!"

With a perfectly straight face, Kakimoto cringes. Jai rolls onto her side and screeches with laughter. Her sides are going to _explode._

She sits up as Dokuro hands her a glass of milk. "Thanks," she gasps, and takes a sip. It's hard not to choke with all that high-quality comedy going on behind them.

Dokuro bobs her head and moves away. Jai coughs, noticing the strange look Kakimoto is giving her. "What?"

He sighs, which makes his glasses slip down on his nose. "Why did you bring them here?"

She glances over her shoulder. Sasagawa and Joshima are locked arm-to-arm on the floor. Teeth gritted. Sweat dripping off their temples. Takeshi leans forward, a grin splitting his face and sparks in his eyes, while Dokuro hides a smile behind her own cup. "You don't like them?" she asks.

Somehow, Kakimoto manages to make a disgusted face at her without even twitching a muscle.

Jai snickers. "They'll grow on you, you know! You can't avoid it!"

He presses his thumb and two of his fingers against his eyes for a moment. When he opens them again, they have a certain depth inside that wasn't there before. "Sasagawa Ryohei was hospitalized because of Ken."

She grins. "And Takeshi broke his arm. Almost missed the fall baseball games 'cause of it."

Kakimoto stares at her. "Why?" he asks. Quietly.

She hears the question behind that one word and jabs her thumb at the squabbling group. "They have this thing," she says, "where they can forget things without actually forgetting them at all."

His eyelids flutter just a little. "Not forgive?"

"You never apologized."

A dark mood bears down on him, all of a sudden. "And we never will." His words are sharp as knives, and a little too clear for her liking. "You don't understand. You heard what happened to us, but you don't know what it's like. You couldn't possibly understand why we did what we've done."

She knows that.

This group grew up in blood. Flourished in it, even. They took the hard path. They clawed their way up in the dark, like moon flowers, pale but sickly.

Meanwhile, Jai grew up loved, and grew up loving others. She doesn't know what it's like to _not_ know about kindness unwarranted. Compared to them, she's the spoiled child—the one who doesn't understand anything. Anything at all.

"That's true," she admits.

Kakimoto narrows his eyes at her. After a drawn-out pause, he gestures at her cup and says, "You drink chocolate milk."

That came out of nowhere. Jai holds it up for the stars to see. "I do, yeah. It's good."

He tilts his head. "I would've checked it for poisons," he intones, "cyanide or arsenic, or I wouldn't have drank it at all."

The milk swirls inside its container. Plain. Brown. Creamy. And completely, utterly _harmless._

"Oh," Jai says.

It's the cruel beginnings of an understanding.

* * *

A hot lump of lava melts on her tongue. Jai sucks in a deep breath through her mouth, letting the Flames travel harmlessly down her throat and wind down into her lungs—before blowing out. Her stomach sucks inward as a long red trail flows from her lips, twisting around in the air.

"Whoa," Joshima mutters, his eyes wide.

She puffs a few more times to get rid of the remnants of Storm Flames flickering around her teeth. "I feel like a dragon," she rasps, and makes grabby hands for the water.

Fon gives her the cup. "Does it taste like anything?"

"Is it spicy?" Takeshi laughs. "I feel like it'd be spicy!"

Jai takes a big gulp. "Ahhh, nope! Flames taste like nothing. Your throat gets really dry, though." She grins at them. "You guys should try it! It's really cool!"

Before she even finishes the last few words, Takeshi and Sasagawa are already exchanging their Flames—using their own is too boring, apparently. In her lap, Skull wrestles his helmet off, expression eager. Fon lets out a thoughtful hum, and Dokuro's mouth forms a perfect 'o' as she clasps her hands on her knees.

Kakimoto and Joshima exchange glances. "It doesn't burn at all?" the hedgehog asks.

"Nope! Not if you don't want it to."

With a shrug, Sasagawa pops the Rain Flame into his mouth. His eyes bulge. It's hilarious. "Thih ish weir'!"

Jai laughs. "Yeah, there you go! Now take a deep breath!"

He inhales, as do Takeshi and Skull. They blow fire out of their lungs in a trio of bright, shining colors. Yellow, blue, purple. The Flames spiral into the air in streaming ribbons, rippling rivers, before trickling into nothing.

Skull coughs out a few remaining tendrils and wipes his mouth. "Wow," he croaks. "Y'right. Gimme water."

They fumble around for the pre-prepared glasses. Takeshi just reaches over and steals Jai's.

She slaps him across the head. Affectionately. "You're not going to try?" she asks Fon.

The assassin runs a hand over his chin. "Perhaps I will. Will you lend me your Flames, then?"

"You do realize there's no difference between using someone else's and using your own?" Still, she takes a handful of her Sun Flames and drops it onto his. "Go all out!"

As Fon drops the sunlight onto his tongue and Sasagawa trades Flames with Skull, Jai turns to the Kokuyo gang. "You guys should try it, too! It's pretty fun!"

Sasagawa holds up the frothing Flames in his palm. "Hey, Ken! I challenge you to an EXTREME fire-breathing competition!"

Joshima sneers. "This isn't a joke, right?" he asks Jai. "You aren't playing us, right?"

"Nah! Go ahead!"

He makes a tiny sun between his fingers and pops it into his mouth. His pointy teeth gnash together. "Mmph. Yeah, tashtsh like noshing. Jusht air."

Jai laughs. "Man, you're not supposed to try to _eat_ it!"

He sticks out a flaming tongue. Dokuro giggles, and a faint pink tint powders his cheeks. Oh. Oh, that right there, that's a _crush_. That's adorable. She'll have to tease him about that later.

Kakimoto nudges her with his foot. "How come all of you know how to switch Flames with each other?"

"Well, I showed the Reborn and the others how to do it first." She reaches over and pulls his sock right off. Loser. "And then those guys started showing Tsuna and his friends. Do you want to learn, too? It's pretty fun!" Her grin falls into a frown. "If you ask again what I'm trying to 'gain', I'm going to rip this sock in half."

The boy gives her a dirty look without actually having an expression on his face. How he pulls it off, she doesn't know. It's a neat trick.

"It's fun to show people this sort of thing," Jai explains, since she needs to. "And it's fun doing it, too. It's not an advantage, though, since you can't attack with it."

Takeshi beams at them behind his water. "So you guys should learn! It's really cool!"

"And you'd teach us, huh?" Ken glares at them, mashing his knuckles against a resting cheek. "Forget it. If you can't attack with it, what's the big deal, anyway? What's the point?"

The _point_, he says. He wants to know the _point._

Jai dissolves into laughter, followed by Fon. They both remember Reborn asking the same thing. What kind of question is that supposed to be?

Meanwhile, Takeshi grins and holds out a hand towards the gang. If he notices the way they stiffen, he doesn't show it. "Here," he says, bright and free and burning inside. "I'll show you guys! How 'bout it?"

One heartbeat. Two. Three.

Tentatively, Dokuro reaches out.

* * *

On a warm night, with a nice breeze drifting through the shattered window panes, Jai stays up with Rokudo under the light of their make-shift Flame lamps and teaches him about seals.

She takes a random book ('Kafka on the Shore', Tsuyoshi likes that one) and puts it on the floor between them. "Sealing is a useful thing to know," she says to both him and his smile. "You can use it for preserving things and keeping them safe, like important documents or something."

"I already know how to do that."

"You do?"

One pale finger presses against the front cover. A swirl of Mist Flames blossom at his touch. "Like so," he says, and smirks.

Jai laughs, reaches over, and brushes the Flame right off the paper. She grins at the blank look on his face. "Proper sealing takes time and concentration, you know! It's kind of like making multiple illusions at once—you have to add layers on top of it."

Just to demonstrate, she makes her own layered seal with a flourish and pushes the book over to him. And then she shows him how to break it. "The goal is to make your Flames imitate the ones in the seal as much as possible. Try to synchronize with them, and then it peels off like tape." She rolls over onto her back. It's a lazy evening. "'Course, you can always break through it with force, but that's usually harder and it won't always work out. Especially if the seal's complicated."

Rokudo tries to pry the pages of the book apart. He fails. His eyebrows shoot straight out of the stratosphere. "I see. You not only preserve the object—you completely seal it off."

"Yep! Go on, try to take it off!"

His brow furrows, crinkling the girl's eyepatch. Carefully, he runs a hand over her seal and gets to work.

Jai passes the time by staring at the ceiling, tracing nonexistent constellations with her eyes. The flickering Flames are a soothing sound. A lullaby. "I can't heal her, you know," she says at some point, breaking the silence that's fallen between them.

Out of her sight, Rokudo shifts a little. "Chrome, you mean?" A chuckle. "I was rather curious about that. You've shown to be capable of reviving yourself multiple times from the brink of death, but not restoring a little girl's organs?"

She wiggles her shoulders in a deformed sort of shrug. "It's hard to heal things that aren't there anymore. Missing organs, lost limbs, that sort of thing. But I think I could've done it, once."

"Not anymore?"

Her Sun Flames shiver. "Not anymore." She laughs. "Maybe a decade from now, when I might be strong enough. Or will that be inconvenient for you, if I do?"

"Not at all. By then, I'll have no use for the girl. The mafia will be crushed beneath my feet." Rokudo's voice shifts. Very subtle. "Don't think I don't know what you're doing, Jai. The Vongola is merely a stepping stone in my path."

Jai breathes deep. "_I_ don't even know what I'm doing, though."

"You brought the Vongola's Rain and Sun here for a reason. The Arcobaleno have been assembled as well." A smile enters his voice. "But that won't matter, in the end. They're nothing more than tools at my disposal. Toys, easily discarded."

She tilts her head a little, just enough for her to catch a glimpse of his glowing cherry-sea eyes, and the wraith of mist weaved around his fingers.

"You understand, don't you?" he asks—for some reason, amused.

What did he say before, during their game? Something about her being like him, about seeing himself in her. He was wrong, though. He still is.

"Not really," she says.

They're not like each other at all.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** this chapter is like 200% kokuyo gang hahaha _i didn't plan any of this. _and then the next chapter is probably going to be like 99% viper.

so let's say i write a chapter in other POV(s) besides jai's at some point. which character(s)'s perspective would you want to see? is there anything specific you want to be written about, judging from the stuff you've seen so far?

thanks for reading and for your favorites, follows, and reviews!


	10. Teal

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** after some consideration, i've decided that it'll be necessary to write a single chapter with different POVs at some point…but it's not going to show up anytime soon haha. still, thanks for your helpful input from the last chapter, you guys!

sorry for the longer wait! inspired by yanni's music ("felitsa" in particular). this was my least favorite chapter to write thus far, please enjoy?! (and regarding the excerpt of jai's past below, translations will be in the endnotes.)

* * *

10\. TEAL

* * *

_Hatz leans down, all grace and poise and theatrics, a small stem twirling in his fingers. "Pity a sunflower, little one?"_

_The little girl grasps it, a dimpled smile half-hidden behind the soft, yellow petal folds. "Epaino, kýrie," she mumbles, and dances away, calling to her friends in the clearing of mossy trees. He watches her leave with a twinkling sort of fondness._

_Jai studies the scene, and raps her knuckles lightly against his sleeve. "Hello, enchanter."_

_He whirls around. "Oy, Jai!_ _Dóbro dĕnĕ, my lady of the hour!" Her vision fills with the hot-red gradient of a poppy, the scent sharp against her nose. "A flower for a thought?"_

_With a smile, she lets him curl it around one of her ears. "Of what sort, eh?"_

_Hatz grins, wiping some damp petals off his hands. "Scarlet suits you. Anyway, I've been thinking—"_

_"You, _thinking?_ The stars have aligned!"_

_"—oh, hush—about our beloved Maestro's woes, all of which are brought by those sour old plums of the Faet Court's boughs." He puffs up, feet planted firmly on the ground. "Jai, what would you say to…ah, a permanent solution for Maestro's pesky little problems?"_

_She laughs, delighted. "Oh, about time! Do tell!"_

_"That's the spirit!" Hatz leans forward. A mischievous smirk possesses his lips. "Here's the plan! Are you ready? If we—as in you and I, my dear partner-in-crime—tint the old ones' soup with a drop of Valeriana, which—as we know—invokes the deepest of _sleeps_—"_

_Jai cheers, and the wind carries the sound over the field. It's a good day for jokes and games. "Perfect! Maestro would surely be pleased! And after they've fallen into a slumber—"_

_"We'll _pile_ them onto the caravan and _roll_ them down the hillside!" He leaps onto the nearest boulder, spreads his arms, and twirls on one foot. Their laughter bounces across the rocks. "Better yet, we'll send them to the quarries of the south! The children will put them to work!" His body is a silhouette against the cyan skylight. "Tell me you see it, Jai!"_

_She hops up next to him. "No, Hatz, better yet—present them to the Phantoms, give them the Berina's trials of admission! Perhaps that would pound a few chords of integrity into their heads."_

_A giddy, fluttering laugh. "Oy, wouldn't it? Those _bumbling idiots _need quite the pounding!" Hatz takes her by the hand and guides them through the stones. "As they are now, with their stomachs as rounded as great, bulbous moons—"_

_"And the crows often mistaking their heads for eggshells—"_

_His hands are wild, lively things, as if possessed by spirits of their own. "Empty ones, mind you, with not a _speck_ of intellect inside!"_

_Leathery boots crunch against the grass. Jai jerks to a halt at the sight of wild, flaxen branches of hair, and the wry twist to the mouth of the one observing them from below. "Dearest Hatz, did I not ask you to return to my side by noon or before?" Prithia asks, eyeing them carefully._

_Hatz snaps his fingers. "Oy! Yes! You did, didn't you? Thank you, Maestro, for rekindling my poor, failing memory—"_

_"You walk a fine line, apprentice-mine."_

_A small groan. "Why, why, _why_ must you always appear so _soundlessly_?" he laments as he jumps onto even ground. Jai follows him._

_Prithia doesn't miss a beat. "To keep fledglings grounded when their heads take flight." She stalks ahead, her students trailing behind on either side of her like twin tails of horses. "Hatz, off to the square with you. Your friend Savone has been far too patient in waiting. Jai, would you kindly help me take care of our travel preparations?"_

_Jai grins at Hatz, who scowls right back. "Yes, Maestro!" she chirps._

_"Yes, Maestro," he grumbles._

_Their mentor reaches out, as if to embrace them from behind—only to smack them sternly across their heads with light, calloused hands._

* * *

"Woman."

"Yeah?"

"Show me something useful."

She twirls the shamisen around in one hand in a neat little show of sword-tricks. Judging by Tsuyoshi's evil eye, he must think she's going to break the thing on accident. As if—it's too precious to be broken. She'll cut her own hand off before she drops it. "I _am_ showing you useful things. You're getting stronger, aren't you?"

Hovering an inch or so above the tabletop, Viper tugs at the strands of hair framing his rich-red eyes. He seems irritable. Slightly vexed. "I mean techniques—as in actual techniques that can be used in combat, not just pithy games of playing catch."

Jai glances at him. "According to Verde, you guys're getting stronger every day just by practicing perfect control. They aren't just 'pithy games', you know?"

"That's not what I meant and you know that. What I am _saying_ is that those things are _not_ the extent of what you are capable of teaching us."

"I'm waiting until you guys learn what True Fire is." She looks up as the door chimes a few notes, and one of their regular customers—Yuuto—strolls in, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Hi, Yuuto!"

He beams back. Brightly. Warmly. "Good morning, Jai! It's weird, seeing this place empty."

"Well, it's only ten. Early lunch?"

"Yeah, got some business at twelve." He takes a seat at the table in the far corner, murmuring a greeting to Tsuyoshi as the older man comes around.

Jai gets the impression that he would've sat closer if it weren't for Viper's presence. It's becoming an unspoken rule for most citizens to avoid getting involved with the various 'infant geniuses' wandering around town. Funny.

When she turns back to Viper, his face is set up in dangerous lines. The darkness of his shadow looks a little deeper than before. Like a lake, instead of a puddle. "You haven't given us any clues as to what True Fire is supposed to mean," he says. Each word has a biting edge to it.

She twists her mouth to the side. "Well, first of all, you shouldn't look too hard for the answer. It's not supposed to be a riddle. Or a puzzle."

"What is it, then?"

"The truth, I guess. Hence the name, True Fire." The neck of the shamisen spins around, around, around her wrist and then back into her other hand. "True Fire is…a slow realization."

Viper looks close to rolling his eyes. "I don't have time for slow realizations."

Jai laughs. "You don't? What's the hurry?"

"That's not your business." His fingers tap-tap-tap against his leg. "But if it can convince you…I have a mission to take care of. Soon. An urgent one."

"A mission?" She puts the shamisen down. "What do you mean?"

The Mist really does roll his eyes this time. "Reborn and Fon take hits, yes? My work is something similar."

Jai absorbs this new piece of information. Viper has never talked about what he does when he's not hanging around Namimori. Not to her, not to the others. Reborn never even managed to wrangle the reason why Viper disappeared in the first place, all those years ago. He's a taciturn guy. Brimming with secrets.

She leans back against the counter. "What does that have to do with—oh. Oh. You wanna learn tricks that'll help you kill people and complete your mission."

A pause.

"It's urgent," he repeats.

She hums. "Are we talking about a suicide mission, or a potentially lethal mission, or an important mission you can't afford to screw up on, or—"

"The last one." Viper flicks his wrist, letting out a small noise of exasperation. "And the second one, I suppose. There's always the risk of what will happen to me if I fail."

Harsh. That's one dangerous client. Jai didn't know it was possible for anyone to have that kind of control over Viper, of all people.

Or maybe there's something else involved all of this, some deeper meaning to this mission she'll probably never get the chance to understand. Well, either way.

She mulls over her options—only two. Show Viper the potential of his power now, or take her time and let him learn when—not _if_—he comes back from this mission of his. But what if he gets hurt because of her decision? Irreparably damaged? Not Viper would allow such a thing to happen to himself, but—

Better safe than sorry, as they say. If the Mist thinks it's serious business, it's probably even a little more than that. "When d'you leave?"

"In a month."

Jai nods to herself. "Right. Sure. I'll do it." A quick glance at the clock. The time has hardly changed. Ten o' six. "Takeshi's baseball game starts after lunch and I told Fuuta and Tsuna I'd drop by, so I won't have time to sit down and do anything with you today. How about tomorrow?"

"I won't be here tomorrow. Are you free on Wednesday?"

"Yeah, Wednesday works! Deal?"

"Deal." Viper mouth flattens out into the barest semblance of a smile. "Until then."

In a ghostly wisp, he vanishes from his spot. Jai picks up the shamisen again.

Such a strange one.

* * *

The cold, crispy morning air bleaches her breath until it flows from her mouth in great streams of white smoke, trailing off into the breeze. Dewdrops glitter on the steel staircases leading down to the ground. They seem frozen. Crystallized. Priceless beads with rainbow eyes and smiles.

The neat thing about Sun Flames is that they'll naturally burn hotter than all the other Flames. Jai sits on the rooftop of the old apartment building in nothing but her pajamas, her skin scorching with heat. Viper stands across from her and uses her as a furnace.

"So here's the thing," she says, leaning forward. Her hands are knitted below her chin and elbows rested on her knees. "I'm a Sun who was taught by Suns, and you're a Mist. What I've been showing you guys up until now are things that anyone can learn. There…aren't a lot of things I can show you personally."

Jai's brow knits as she thinks back to the days from before, under a sizzling sun behind a curtain of red beads, watching Dineva wrap her snake-like Flames in and out and around her fingers over and over again. "If you were a Storm, I could've given you some pointers on how to make your Flames disintegrate things in the blink of an eye. If you were a Lightning, like Aiva, I could tell you about a technique that lets you stop someone's heart at close contact." She runs a hand through her loose hair. "If you were a Sun, like me, I could show you how to heal someone _wrong_—to switch up the pieces of their body until it doesn't even look like a body anymore."

Viper raises an eyebrow at that.

"But the only things I know well enough to teach about Mist Flames are the basics, like how to create illusions from scratch—and you already know how to do that." Jai studies the blinking traffic lights in the distance. Green, yellow, red, green. "There are two things I can think of that might be useful to you. The first is a method of protection I haven't showed you guys yet. The second…isn't so much of a lesson as it is a starting point for you to use. We're going to start with the second."

He folds his arms across his chest. "Be more specific. What kind of starting point?"

She laughs. "Sit down, first of all! And then give me your arm."

The Mist offers his wrist from the velvety folds of his cloak. The palm of her hand curls around the entire length of his lower arm, dwarfing it. Jai presses her thumb down on a vein. It pulses merrily. And meanwhile, her Sun Flames brush across his own, mirroring the hold.

"Let's start off with a story," Jai says. "There was a fox who drank the blood of a boy. The next day the fox's tongue turned crimson and his eyes went hazel. When the boy's sister was about to die, the fox slept by her side, and they went together."

She sifts through Viper's Flames like they're the pages of a book, just not nearly as readable. What she's looking for isn't there, though. It goes deeper. "There's no moral to the story."

What she's looking for, the little spark—it's hiding in the heartbeat of his wrist, in his heart, in the crevices of his mind. The rhythm is constant.

"How profound." His voice is dry.

Jai gathers her Sun Flames in the fingernail of her thumb and pushes down. Lightly, of course. "There is, however, a _point_ to it. Because the fox drank the boy's blood, you see, and it just goes to show that blood is powerful. Blood bonds people together." She feels it. A tiny thing, like a spot of glass, hiding in the center of the force of life drumming in his veins. The lock to a closed door. "It might not _seem_ important, but blood is the web that ties us together. Every person in this world carries the blood of their ancestors, and their ancestors carried the blood before them, all the way to the beginning and over to the present."

With her free hand grasping his own and the other clamped around his arm, Jai reels back—

And _slams_ her Flames into the lock of that door, like a hammer slams its head into a glass panel. She imagines crystal shards raining down. The groan of protesting steel.

"A long time ago, there was a group of people who had these really interesting abilities," she explains as she does it again. And again. The glass cracks. The lock trembles. His blood warms, beat pulsing strong. A fire on the verge of being kindled. "Nobody knows where they came from, or how they got them, or why they even had them in the first place. But these abilities didn't just end with them. They were passed down from mother to child, father to child, and even though they grew dormant over time, that inheritance—those bloodlines—went on for thousands of years."

She pulls her Flames forward, into the gaping hole she's created where foreign forces lurk. Come out, she thinks. Look around, you're outside. You're free.

They trickle outward in weak dribbles, and then a steady brook—and then a waterfall, pouring out into the Mist, flowing through the criss-crossed lines of arteries and veins in a great wealth of power. They're strange. Warped. Unfamiliar. But they remind Jai of golden-lit tombs and expanses of a desert beyond compare, spirits whipped up by the same wind that carved out the dunes and the rippling of the sand.

"These bloodlines," Jai says, "carry Earth Flames." And removes her thumb from his wrist.

There in his palm flickers a hazy indigo light. It has a fine, grainy quality to it.

She grins and claps her hands together. "Looks like your Desert Flame's just been unlocked! Congratulations!"

Dead silence falls.

Viper stares down at it. Wide-eyed. Unblinking.

_"What?" _he squeaks.

* * *

_"What?"_ she squeaks, ducking beneath the branch of a nearby tree. The branch itself is a lovely shade of brown, rich with sunlight-dipped leaves and coiling around the air in the shape of this magnificent behemoth. It's a piece of artwork, that's what it is. Art.

A second later, the tonfa smacks sharply into the branch. It breaks off and falls to the ground. The stump weeps tears of sap.

Jai gasps. "Rude!"

"I said _fight me_," Hibari snaps, lunging forward.

"Abso_lute_ly not!" She sidesteps another tonfa and nearly trips over the edge of the sidewalk. "Seriously, who—" Another swipe at her ribs. "—challenges people to fights—" Swing at the temple, avoided. "—just out of nowhere like that? No introductions or, like, 'hi, how are you', 'lovely weather we're having'? Oh, _geez_—"

The cold steel beam misses her arm by only a centimeter. Jai can feel the hair prickle along her skin.

She has no idea how she even got into this situation. All she was doing was strolling by the school, minding her own business, whistling with the birds in the trees like any normal pedestrian. And then this boy pounded her face in with his tonfas, as if that's some sort of normal everyday greeting. Like people beat in their neighbors' faces on a regular basis.

Fon might have warned her about this before. Something about crazy mothers, strange upbringings and violent tendencies. Well.

Jai laughs. Nervously. "Hey, so, I kinda need to go now—"

"Fight me first," says the boy. His grin is wild. Absolutely insane. His eyes are even worse. "You can still fight without a sword."

"Kid, I'm _late_ for _work!"_ Jai ducks down again. The lamppost in front of her lets out a pained ringing sound as metal clashes against metal. Her face scrunches at the sound. "Did Reborn put you up to this? Because this is totally the kind of thing he would—woo-_hoo_, that was _close_—the kind of thing he would do!"

Hibari narrows his eyes. "Quit messing around. I'll bite you to death."

Alright, that's it. She's getting out of here. Her sandals don't make good running shoes, but maybe if she chucks them now and takes off, she can outrun him. That'll do it.

Before Jai can put her plan into motion or the Cloud can smash her organs inward, a flash of red flits down from above, like a scarlet sparrow. It slams down on the boy's tonfa.

She doesn't see what happens next, because it's all a brilliant blur of red and grey—just that Hibari reels back, his shoulders twisting as if struck from one side. His face is painted with surprise.

A second later, Fon flips over onto her shoulder.

Jai laughs. "Hey, Fon!"

"Hello, Jai." The Storm smiles. "You're late for work, I see."

She rubs the back of her head. "Eh, yeah. At least Thursdays aren't _that_ busy. Usually."

Hibari tilts his head. His gaze locks onto Fon's. Flat. Impassive. "You."

"Me," Fon agrees, his eyes hinting something dangerous. "It's been a while, Kyoya. You look well."

Oh, right. Fon hasn't really interacted with Hibari—or I-Pin—the whole time he's been in Namimori. She wonders why he's decided to show himself now, all of a sudden. Maybe she'll ask him about it later.

An impatient swish of the tonfas. "What do you think you're doing?" snaps the Cloud.

"Stopping you, of course. I'm afraid Jai is running a bit late at the moment. Perhaps you two can continue this at another time?"

Jai shoots the Storm a look—_she is never doing this again_—which he discreetly returns—_small sacrifices_.

Hibari snorts, almost disgusted. Like Fon's words make him want to vomit. "I see no reason to listen to you." He phrases it like the infant is at the lowest trophic level of the hypothetical food chain—which doesn't make sense. They're supposed to be _family. _Family isn't supposed to look down on each other.

Fon's smile grows sharper and sharper until it could cut straight through those steel beams. "No? Then I suppose I will have to force you."

At that, the boy's eyes go wide, and then narrow. "You want to fight?"

The Storm's voice seems to surge upward and out of his lungs. "It's high time we finished that match of ours. We've postponed it for far too long." He hops onto the ground and glances up at Jai. "This is…between us. You should hurry, before Tsuyoshi decides to make sashimi out of you."

"Hey, I'd be the best thing on the menu!" She takes a few steps back. "See you later? In one piece?"

He makes a shooing motion with his hand. "I make no promises."

The grin Hibari gives him is absolutely _feral._

Jai jogs away, into one of the alleys she knows will connect back to the street leading to Takesushi. She looks back over her shoulder only once, just in time to see Fon and Hibari meet each other in a dizzying dance of fists and open palms and tonfas. Hibari looks exhilarated, terrifying, while Fon simply smiles back, looking as though all is right in the world.

* * *

Earth Flames are odd. Definitely peculiar. Jai doesn't even know how to describe them—never has, actually. They're Flames, yes, but not Sky Flames. Not _life_. They're something different, like a cousin or a sister or something else entirely.

Sky Flames are your soul and spirit and body and heart. Earth Flames are what lives in your soul and sleeps in your spirit and runs through your body and pumps through your heart, and—see? There's just no good definition for it.

"I think nearly all people have Earth Flames inside them," Jai explains. In front of her, on the windowsill of her apartment room, Viper plays with the sand like any other regular infant his age—only with far more proficiency. "Blood connects people far deeper than they realize. But Earth Flames are usually always sleeping. They'll only come out if you know where to look."

Viper makes a floating, hissing sphere in his hands. "If Verde tries to dissect me, I'll just point him to you," he mutters, before turning to her. "Do you have one? An Earth Flame?"

"Nah."

"Why not?"

"I'm no ordinary person, I guess." Jai props her back against the wall. "What's it feel like? That Flame?"

The sphere thins and elongates into the shape of a snake. Copper stripes bleed into the sand. Diamond patterns. Eyes with slit pupils, and an arrow-like head. It flicks out its tongue, tasting the air and writhing in Viper's grasp. Fantasma sees it and lets out a snarl.

"It's different from Mist Flames," the infant murmurs as he inspects the snake. "Similar, yet not quite. The Flame is almost like a building material." His mouth twitches upward in the closest he'll ever come to a smile. "If I can create real illusions from this, my enemies wouldn't be able to deconstruct them with just their minds. This is…good. Very good."

Jai laughs. "You know, you're looking pretty sinister over there."

Immediately, the snake changes into a wasp the size of her face.

Aha. Nope. She didn't say _anything._

Satisfied with the horrified expression on her face (like the sadist he is), Viper lets the wasp disintegrate in his fingers. "Annoying woman. Now tell me something to make."

"What?"

"You heard me. I'm practicing, so tell me what to make." He gestures at the bare room. "Furniture for your apartment, maybe. Your place is as barren as—"

"A desert?" Jai wheezes.

The Mist closes his eyes, like it pains him to look at her. "No. Don't laugh—that was _vile_. I can see why Reborn gets sick of you."

"Nah, that was great! But…But I guess you just have more of a—"

"Stop."

"A _dry_ sense of humor!"

"_Stop_ _that."_ He glares at her as she chuckles herself sore on the ground. "You aren't funny, woman. Now what do you want? Furniture? A table? A chair?"

Jai sucks in a new breath of air and sits up again. She doesn't know what he's talking about—she's the funniest person alive. "Huh. I dunno! How 'bout both?"

"Don't get greedy."

That hypocrite. "Fine, fine! A chair, then. With a neat design!"

Viper flicks his wrist. In front of them, Desert Flames spiral up to form the nimble wooden legs with swirling feet, and then the smooth basin of a seat. Then, the twisting rails, and finally the vine-like spindles. After a moment's hesitation, he gives the wood some shine.

Overall, it's a _really nice_ chair.

"Wow!" Jai leaps to her feet and goes over to admire it. She runs her fingers along the grooves in the armrests. "This is super cool! How long can you make it last?"

"I don't know, with these Flames. I'll have to experiment." Viper floats over next to her. "Why are you so excited? It's just a chair."

"But it's a chair that _you_ made! And it's really detailed—look at these! These curvy lines! I bet you make chairs for a _living!"_

He pins her with an unimpressed stare. "Are you making fun of me?"

Jai laughs and eases herself into the seat. Not a creak. It's incredibly comfortable, too. "No! I'm just saying—it's really nice. I always thought it was cool, you know, how Mist Flames and Desert Flames can do this sort of thing." She clacks both sets of fingernails against the fine wood. "You guys can make all sorts of things with just your Flames and your mind—all kinds of creations."

"They're not real," Viper points out. "They're illusions. Even real illusions disintegrate over time."

She laughs again. So does everything else, in the end. "But you can appreciate them while they last, right?" She folds her legs on top of each other. "Did you know I used to wish I was a Mist? Since I wanted to make illusions, too. They can be beautiful things."

Viper half-smiles again. "You seem overly content with that chair of yours. I'll put spikes on the armrests and glue you to the seat."

"You wouldn't!"

"I would."

"Yeah, you really would." Jai leans back. "Well, still—thanks for this, Viper!"

He lets out a tiny grunt in reply.

As she rises to her feet again and Viper floats away to raid what little is left inside her fridge, she notices the new patterns carved into the legs of the chair. Intricate columns of sunflowers.

* * *

In the corner of her eye, a small finger points in the direction of the school rooftop. "Is that them?"

Jai follows the line of Lal Mirch's arm over to the diminutive figures in the distance—one red, one black. One is also significantly smaller than the other. Nothing more than a pinprick. "Oh, hey! I think so!" She waves at them. "Hibari! Fon! Hey, Fon!"

Reborn shifts, trying to steady himself on her shoulder. "They can't hear you from there."

"What are they doing?" Lal Mirch asks.

As one, they squint at the two dots. Jai laughs. "No idea!"

Somehow, Reborn produces a giant telescope from his pocket and lifts it to his eye. Handy. "It looks like they're doing something with their Flames. Maybe Fon's teaching him something." He gives Jai a stern look. "You've started a revolution."

She beams at him. "It's fantastic! Isn't it? Verde's been selling the stuff I've been showing him for a really cheap price, and Dino's taught all his men the things _you_ taught _him_, and—"

Lal Mirch smiles. "And I've showed the CEDEF some tricks as well. Your teachings spread quickly." The Rain grabs the back of Jai's scalp as they set off again, passing by the school. "Wasn't this your goal all along? To share what you know with the world?"

There are no cars in sight. Jai spins around on the asphalt. "Yeah, and it's going great! Can you believe it? Soon the whole mafia's going to be doing this stuff!"

"But you know, I'm surprised that Fon is on speaking terms with that boy again," Lal Mirch adds.

Reborn nods his agreement. "He started talking to I-Pin, as well."

"It's a good thing, I suppose. His way of coping was stupid."

Jai glances between them. "Wait, what?"

The hitman tilts his fedora down over his eyes. "Maybe he's realized we don't have a lot of time left."

Lal Mirch sighs. "Colonnello says…Colonnello says he has four years."

"Verde says we have two. There's no way of knowing."

That sounds strange. Ominous, even. "Hey, what?" She pokes Reborn's cheek. "Guys? Fill me in?"

He grabs her finger and twists it backward. Ow. _Ow_. "We shouldn't even be talking about this in the first place."

"But what _are_ you talking about?" Jai frees her finger and looks over at the infant on her other shoulder. "Lal Mirch?"

The Rain's sherry eyes soften, while the rest of her face turns grim. Quite the contrast there. "It's nothing big. Don't worry about it." She meets Reborn's gaze. "Everything is fine."

Jai is totally missing something here. "You sure?"

Reborn pinches her ear. "We're sure. Stop thinking about it. It's not important."

Jai respects secrets. Secrets are pieces of yourself. Secrets are quiet, whispered things that you share with the people you can wholeheartedly trust. Sometimes you take them to the grave. Other times, they surface.

It looks like this is another one of those. So she lets it go.

Besides, they might not be lying to her. Maybe it really isn't all that important.

For some reason, when Jai drops the frown on her face and changes the subject, Lal Mirch smiles. Warmly, kindly. Like a great deed has been done.

* * *

There are three stages of rain in Namimori. The first is a light drizzle, just wet enough to dampen your face and scatter drops of moisture through your hair. The second is an extremely heavy downpour, like a spring shower—in which the roads turn into sunlit lakes, cars into boats, and black-haired honey-eyed boys tend to _swim_ their way to the subway stations on the other side of the city.

The third stage is an ocean falling from the sky, when all the clouds decide to congregate in a funeral mass of weeping and wailing and exaggerated lachrymating. Even worse than a drizzle. Even worse than a spring shower. The worst (and the best) kind of rain.

Unfortunately, around here, there's no stage in between.

On a day of the third stage, while Namimori drowns, Jai sits on Tsuna's back porch to listen to the rain. It's like white noise. Loud and quiet.

Surprisingly, Viper joins her.

(He's an interesting one. Truly. Jai has never met anyone like him before, which is really quite rare—she's met thousands of different faces, but out of all of them, he's the only one who thinks the way he thinks and acts the way he acts. It's quite bizarre.

If Verde consumes her knowledge with vicious vigor, then Viper takes her knowledge and _tears_ into it like a savage beast, fierce and fervent. He hoards it. Devours it. That, and his money. He's the greediest person she's ever met.

Jai is curious.)

"Why do you hoard money the way you do?" she asks at some point, running her hand through the sheen of the curtain of rain pounding against the deck. "Are you saving up for something?"

He huffs. "No."

"Then why?"

"Humanity repeats itself."

Her feet slosh rainwater against the boards. "Sorry, I don't get it."

For a long minute, Viper stays silent. He only speaks up again after Jai turns back to the rainfall, and the original question almost slips her mind. He stares into the backyard without really seeing it. "Do you know the reason why I despise Fon?"

"Isn't it because he's always telling you to stop collecting?"

"Partly. That baby is blind. Arrogant and ignorant—in so many areas." Viper rests his feet on the ground with two small splashes. "He tells me to be prudent. He says that money is worthless, that happiness should be attained through other means besides…materialistic methods." His mouth looks odd, twisted and wrapped around itself. The parody of a smile. "Money is not worthless. Money is the slave driver of this corrupted world, and the crown of humanity's king."

She frowns. "The world isn't corrupted."

"It_ is_, you fool." He watches the rain patter against the grass. His tone is bland. "Give a man the right price and he'll swear servitude in a heartbeat. The mafia is run by money. Governments are run by money. Humankind turns over a new leaf and soils it with greed—soon there are no leaves left in the pile."

"But you're wrong. Humans don't—"

"I could pay for a man to kill his own wife and children and he wouldn't even bat an eye, so long as there's money on the line." Viper shrugs. "The rich become powerful and rise above the rest. Those who cannot understand that can rot in poverty where they belong—just don't drag me down to their level."

"That's why you hoard? To stay above everyone else?"

"There is no other way to succeed in this world. As I said—humanity repeats itself."

Jai runs a wet hand through her equally-wet hair. "Happiness can't be bought, you know."

He gives her a look that makes her feel stupid beyond belief.

"I'm serious," she adds. "Sure, corruption exists, but…aren't people better than that? Aren't we always?"

"Not everyone is—" Abruptly, the Mist cuts himself off. "You can keep deluding yourself, then."

She laughs. The rain drips down her cheeks, her eyes. It's a shame, such a shame, how Viper thinks those things. More than that—he accepts those kinds of things in life without fighting against it. Without fighting the system, even though that's hardly a kind way to live.

Maybe, _maybe_, he's right, and anyone can be bought. But Jai remembers taking her sister's hand and guiding her through the steps of a famous dance, and laughing until her heart leapt out of her chest, and tumbling to the ground with her arms full of raven hair tangled with twigs and leaves—and she is very, very glad to be free.

When she looks back over him, at his narrow eyes and pinched mouth, a new thought strikes her. It slaps her across the face. An epiphany. "You're not actually fine with that, are you?" she asks. "With everything you just said, I mean. About money, and what it can do. You're not happy."

Viper gives her a glance. Perfectly nonchalant. "True. Very true. You know what, woman?" Compared to the greyness of the rain, his red eyes seem to glow. "I'm _furious."_

Jai leans back. He turns away.

And the sea in the sky falls down, down, down.

* * *

Jai used to wonder why the world hasn't been destroyed—why madmen haven't razed the entire surface clean yet. If they have the power, the incentive, what's there to stop them? Why _not_ decimate cities and topple trees and burn civilizations to ashes?

Flames are powerful weapons. There are people in history who could have enslaved the world if they willed it to be, and wars that could have leveled entire continents with the sheer force of their armies collided.

But it's not that they didn't, and there weren't. It's that they _couldn't_, and there _couldn't_ have been.

See, there are ways to block a person's Flames from being expelled. There are methods used to stop one's body from smoldering away into nothing. There are techniques that can keep people alive and breathing in the midst of an inferno, so that they can stumble out of the wreckage and head home again.

One of those techniques is both simple and complex. It's called being stubborn.

"You need to construct a barrier around your core," Jai explains to a keen-eyed Viper. "By your core, I mean your...how do I say it? Your fragile Flames—the ones that keep you alive. The deepest part of your life force. Use your 'outer' Flames to protect your 'inner' Flames—so that if you're ever poisoned or dying slowly, and you need more time to find an antidote or say goodbye, you can still hang on for a little while longer."

"Exactly how long?" Viper asks.

"It depends on how you're dying. The one time I did it, I hung on for two days. One of my friends got a bit of poison in her blood, and since there was nobody around to heal her, she hung on for four until she was cured."

Viper practices it. He does well—his barriers are strong. "Tell me about that time," he says, "that one time when you needed to use this."

They're on Tsuna's roof, admiring the sculptures and palaces the clouds create, colored like lilies against the sky. She laughs, lying down. "It's really kind of weird, how everything worked out! So I was dying slowly, for starters. The only reason I survived that time was thanks to Earth Flames—did I tell you that?"

"No. Is that true?"

"Yeah. See, there's another type of Earth Flame besides the Desert, called the Swamp Flame. Normally, what it does is it makes things decay. But the person I knew who could use it—he knew how to reverse the effect, to preserve things. So after I hung on for two days, he came over and told me I might be able to live if he preserved my body and put me to sleep." Jai folds her arms behind her head. "So I learned how to make my body systems hibernate, and I slept. It was sort of like a coma, you know?"

"And then?" Viper asks.

"They said they'd see me in a week, but I think they died before they could come back to wake me up. So I overslept. And when I actually _did_ wake up, everyone else I knew was dead anyway, so—" She tilts her head and catches a glimpse of the frown on his face. "Those were bad times, near the end. We all knew we were going to die some way or another."

"Why are you telling me this?"

"You asked!"

"I didn't ask for a tragedy." He floats closer. "That's why you came to Namimori alone? Because everyone you knew is _dead?"_

Jai heaves herself upright. "Yeah. I mean, I made some friends before I came here, but they're all fairly new." She laughs at the expression on his face. It looks so—_deliberate_, like he purposely placed each one of his facial features in their appropriate positions. "It's alright, you know. It's really alright."

Viper shakes his head. "You're not lying, are you? You lost all your friends, and still you continue to act the way you do—"

"How am I supposed to act?"

"Like you've _lost_ people, woman! Like you mourn for them, at least."

"But my friends lived _happy_. They died in pain, but you should've seen them when they _lived_—man, Viper, I wish you could've met them. They were amazing!" Jai shakes her head. "My life is never going to be empty now that they're gone. I have you guys, right? It seems like the best things in life are always omnipresent..."

* * *

Jai is sitting on the floor of her apartment, putting on her sandals. The leather straps are getting fringed around the edges. Outside, the birds are chirping, trees swaying—the nice thing about having blank walls is that you can see the way the sunlight from outside makes neat patterns on the surface. It's a good kind of morning. Cold, but good.

Then, as Jai stands up—

Reality splits. The world of creation tears apart. A rip in the fabric of existence. A hole, dreadfully familiar, yawning on the other side of the room. A chilling emptiness that sends shivers down her spine.

First comes the top of the hat. Then the black cloak, fringed with white spikes of fur. Then the bandaged face—no eyes, no nose, no mouth. Nothing.

It happens too fast. Jai fumbles for breath. In front of her, the Vindice takes a single step forward that feels like a league, the portal swirling behind them.

"Jai," they—he—rasps. Stone nails against stone walls.

She takes a step back. This is no illusion (but she wishes it were). "You're…Jack?"

"Yes." Jack makes a motion with his hand, beckoning to the air beside him. The black Flames stretches even further. "Jai, of the House of Vernai. You will be coming with me."

What?

"What?" Her sandals slip off her feet as she takes a few more steps backward, just for good measure. No point in faking confidence when she's already almost died against this guy. "Why?"

"You are in no position to demand for answers. You will come with me immediately."

"You're not even going to tell me what I did that makes you want to put me in jail?"

Jack shifts in place with the sound of rattling chains. "You will not be placed in Vendicare. The reason for this arrest will be revealed after you are taken to a different location."

Jai stares at him. Her stomach clenches at the memory of milky eyes, missing lashes, decaying flesh. "I'm not—then what is this for? Because if you can't give me a real reason, then I'm not cooperating."

Like hell is she going anywhere with him. Him and his deathly Flames. _Like hell._

The bandages over his face crinkle in the impression of a smile. Or a scowl. "Your cooperation is not necessary. This is your first and last warning. Come with me willingly or I will take you by force."

Oh. Oh, she sees now. So that's how it is.

No choice, then.

"No," she says.

And as she steps backward, her skin glows like a tongue of golden lava, and a burning-freezing sensation fills her chest. Jack's chains are lashing forward, but it's too late. She's already—

—standing at the brink of an intersection, melted plaster clinging to her clothes. The elderly man next to the stoplight lets out a startled shriek. She give him a reassuring thumbs-up, pours her own Sun Flames into her body again, and—

—lands in a back-alley next to the clothing stores. Her bare feet slip over a garbage can. Jai's back slams into the wall.

She knows this place. About a mile from her own apartment and twenty minutes away from Takesushi. It's not far away enough.

With that last thought in mind, she pushes off the wall and—

—nearly crashes into the tree in front of her. Luckily, none of the surrounding grasses have been burned. Cars stream past in vivid streams. Where is this? Not the canopy road. No, this is the street next to the dango shop. That's a good distance away from her apartment building.

Jai glances to her right, just in time to see a little girl with grey-brown pigtails drop all her books onto the ground.

She waves at her. The little girl doesn't seem to notice—she just stares, her jaw lying somewhere next to her feet. No hello? No wave back? Alright.

Jai leans against the tree. She needs a plan. A course of action. Like what? Because when it comes to running away from the Vindice—

A black hole opens up on the other side of the street.

Damn it.

Jai turns tail and flees, heading toward—

—the brick wall. She braces her hands against it before her head can tip over and smash open. A pungent smell wafts through the air. The dumpsters reek. Her fingers curl into fists.

If Jack isn't going to give up on the chase, Jai has no chance of fighting back. She needs to hide.

Where? No, not 'where'. _Who_. A Mist can hide her. That's the best chance she's got.

Rokudo?

Wrong. What is she, an idiot? Rokudo and his kids are wanted by the Vindice—she'll be leading Jack straight to them. Absolutely unacceptable.

Viper?

Maybe. Is Viper even in town? She can't be sure.

But right now, it's the only chance she's got.

Jai falls back, gathers up her Flames for her biggest jump yet, and—

—pinwheels her arms to avoid toppling over onto the sidewalk. Her skin feels fevered, her vision blurred. This would be her fourth time teleporting. No, her fifth. Actually, it doesn't matter, because this isn't Tsuna's neighborhood and right now _Jai needs to be_ _in Tsuna's neighborhood_. She takes a deep breath—

—as she lands in a straight sprint with shaky legs, heading around the bend towards Tsuna's wooden-brown house, through his gate, almost tackling the door down. She rings the doorbell.

"Coming!" Sawada calls.

"Come _faster_," Jai whispers. "Come on, come on, come on—"

The door swings open. Jai hurtles past the startled brunette, slipping twice on the carpet in the hall as she flies over to the living room. She skids to a halt in the doorway.

Hovering above the coach with Skull and Lal Mirch, Viper looks up in undisguised surprise.

"Jai?" Behind her and lower down, Reborn's voice cuts through the air. "What's wrong?"

Jai doesn't even bother looking at the rest of them. "Viper! Viper, hide me!"

The Mist rears back. "What? Why?"

"Vindice!"

In an instant, everyone moves. Jai finds herself being pushed back into the corner of the room, Viper's red-red-red eyes filling her vision for a few moments before retreating. "Stay there," he orders, Mist Flames already wreathed around him. "Don't move, don't speak, try not to breathe." His voice lowers into a mutter. "How is it even possible for you to screw up _this badly?"_

Despite the situation, Jai lets out a breathless laugh. "Excuse _you_, I didn't—"

"That was a rhetorical question. I said _quiet_." Viper pulls his Flames around her, similar to wrapping a present. She leans back on the walls. Her own presence feels muddled, distorted by overlapping waves of an imaginary reality. Behind the illusionist, the others watch on with a fair amount of wariness. Reborn slams the door to the living room shut.

Colonnello and Fon hop onto the windowsill. "What happened, kora?" the Rain asks.

"The Vindice are coming. Jai's trying to hide."

"What? How did she screw up _that badly?!"_

Hey. Come on.

They leap onto the couch cushions. Verde pokes his head through the window next, sipping his coffee. "Jai is targeted by the Vindice?"

"Oh, we didn't tell you about that? We didn't tell you about that. Yeah, Jai's an idiot, kora."

"A huge idiot."

"Of immeasurable proportions."

She feels so loved sometimes.

"She says stuff like 'wow, man, you need to enjoy life to its fullest!' And then she goes and does things like _this, _so it's like—"

As the Arcobaleno moan and groan about how stupid she is, Jai has to resist the urge to squirm. It feels like being smothered in a thousand blankets of wool. Meanwhile, Viper's face twists in concentration as his illusions start piling up. "Exactly how many layers are you putting up?" she hisses.

"I'm not counting," he hisses back. "Now_ silence!"_ And with that, he slashes into the air with his hands, and the final layer slides over Jai's (invisible) body like a silk cloak.

As soon as Viper turns around, a black hole forms in the middle of the room, and Jack steps out.

Tension spikes through the room. Jai holds her breath, compresses her Flames into a tight ball no bigger than her own fist, and waits.

"Vindice," Fon greets. Serenely, as always.

Jack tilts his head. "Arcobaleno." A deep, rumbling sound. "How rare it is to see you all together."

The tip of Reborn's gun points to the floor. "What business do you have with us?"

"Not with you." Jack's head turns and turns, his gaze crawling across the room. It settles on her for a heart-stopping second before continuing along its way. "I'm here for Jai. You will tell me where she is."

Fon's smile is as smooth as a steel blade. "We cannot, seeing as we have no knowledge of her whereabouts."

The Vindice has no visible eyes, but his stare slashes straight into Fon's bones. The Storm doesn't falter—simply holds his head high and smiles, smiles, smiles wide. They're brilliant liars, all of them. It must come with the territory. "Cannot or will not?" Jack asks.

"As I said, we don't know where she is."

"Then produce her."

"And how do you suggest we do that?" Viper's tone is somewhat of an oxymoron. Passionately indifferent. "Why do you want to find her?"

Chains rattle. "That is none of the Arcobaleno's concern." His head tilts to the side again, searching every crevice of the room. Jai breathes out light puffs of air into her hands.

Colonnello walks forward on the coffee table. Granted, it's only a few steps, but he still manages to make it look impressive. Like a Viking, striding into combat. "Like those guys said—we don't know where she is, and we have no way of finding her. If you wanna look for her by using us, you're outta luck, kora."

It's Skull's turn to step up. Jai gets the feeling that the Cloud is trying to imitate Colonnello, but it doesn't really work out. He ends up kind of swaggering forward, like a gangster. "Y-Yeah! Wh-What he s-said—"

As one, Colonnello and Reborn slam their feet into Skull's back and press his head into the table. Ouch. "Shut up, lackey," the hitman orders through Skull's muffled screeches and flailing limbs.

They all look up again as Jack's portal opens behind him. "Very well, then," he rasps—and is it just her, or does he sound almost impatient? Irritated? It's hard to tell, with that gravelly voice and bandaged face and Flames that make her want to tear out of her own soul— "Good day, Arcobaleno."

He turns on his heel and disappears. The black Flames snap shut.

It's over. Just like that. It's _over._

Jai slides down the wall until she reaches the bottom. The illusions are already peeling off her skin, one by one. "Oh, stars," she breathes. "Thanks, you guys. Thanks, Viper."

The rest of them seem to deflate on the spot. "Is he gone for good?" Lal Mirch asks.

Reborn grunts. "Define 'for good'."

Verde is the one to shatter her momentary relief. He lingers in the background, his mug placed neatly off to the side. Green eyes flash beneath wire rims. "And what if the Vindice decide to return? What will you do then?"

Jai opens her mouth, fully intent on answering with a perfectly reasonable and valid response, and—

Nothing. She's got nothing.

"I don't know," she admits, and looks at the others. They stare back.

Viper reaches up to press a hand against his temple. "We just don't know," he says.

* * *

While the stars are in bloom, she dreams.

"I'll see you again in a week," says the man with white hair.

(He doesn't.)

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** regarding the snippet of jai's past in the beginning of this chapter—"dóbro dĕnĕ" means 'good afternoon'. the little girl says "epainō, kýrie" which should mean "thank you, sir" if i haven't gotten these translations all messed up.

last bit is partly inspired by antoine de saint-expury; "all the stars are a-bloom with flowers". the little prince is full of wonderful lines. (also a few of the lines in this chapter were inspired by dae of the past because dae of the past happens to be a wonderful, beautiful human being)

by the way the history between hibari and fon may or may not be explained after like a billion chapters later haha. i'm getting impatient for the future arc, so i'm going to try to squeeze the next two chapters i had planned into one single chapter, but we'll have to see. and then we'll be breezing through the varia arc! finally!

faux has surpassed 170 favorites and 140 followers, which is way more than i thought this would ever receive! this story has gotten so much wonderful feedback and support! your reviews are absolutely inspiring, thank you guys!


	11. Cyan

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** it's been a long time since the last update, and i'm really sorry about that! motivation really dropped over the course of the school year. despite the lack of activity on my end, the number of favorites and followers have apparently doubled over the past…many….months, which is great! also some of you sent in super nice reviews. i'm glad that this story is something that stands out for you guys.

recently, and at the risk of making it look pretentious, i've gone back and redone a lot of formatting for the previous chapters (no need to reread them though, the content itself isn't changed). just as a heads-up. now enjoy chapter 11!

* * *

11\. CYAN

* * *

_Jai cups the mirror in her hands, glowering at her limp brown hair and spotty brown skin. Her eyes look more like wet sand in scallop whites rather than lush rich hues. "Throw me into that pond over there," she says, "before I do it myself, and save the others from the embarrassment of where I walk—"_

_"Are you mad, talking to yourself over there? Turn around, my lady, let's see how it looks."_

_With a groan, Jai turns around._

_"Aha!" Pir beams at her. The Sky's voice makes Jai cringe sometimes—its enthusiasm rolls through her ears, deep and low, whereas Jai would prefer a tone more mellow. "Beautiful, gorgeous, it is her! The morning flower. When you dance tonight, we will find our necks _swooping_ in your direction—"_

_"Oh, leave me be," Jai mutters as she picks at her shoulders. The dress feels heavy and ungainly. Too smooth around her loudest parts, wringing the flesh around her bones._

_It is beautiful to the eye, a scarlet streak of movement that's meant to bustle around her heels. Jai simply doesn't fit._

_On the other hand, Pir is, and has always been, a beautiful lady. For the centennial dance, she wears a dress with a long, fanning, sapphire tail that sweeps out from behind her for miles on end, adorned with a golden trim. It matches with the colors of the pond, which ripples with fish-scale ribbons at their right, as well as the throats of the birds in the trees._

_The Sky speaks again, but all Jai can see is the smoke-like folds in Pir's billowing trail. She stares at it and how pretty it is and how pretty it looks on Pir, and her chest begins to heave (but only, of course, because it's a little humid in the open room—and her eyes are a bit damp in the corners, yes, but she's only stifling the urge to yawn, and everyone knows that people sometimes cry when they yawn, don't they?). "Pir?"_

_Pir whips around. The excitement has rushed hot to her face. "Yes?"_

_Jai shrugs. "Do you—Do you really think everything looks right?"_

_"Everything?"_

_"Everything."_

_"Everything, everywhere?"_

_"No—on me!"_

_"On you?" A tumbling laugh. "Silly, is that what this is? You're worried Hatz won't like your face today of all days?"_

_Jai ignores the devastating heat creeping into her cheeks. "Not Hatz," she hisses. "Hatz is a friend. I mean _others_."_

_Pir rolls her eyes and furrows her brow. Her smile is loud and bright and incredibly fond, even as she reaches out to smack Jai at the temple. "You can wear the dirtiest, muddiest rag of all the dirty muddy rags in the world—and still! Still, you would be beautiful." The smile stretches into a grin, and the grin lightens into something that resembles the glory of the sky. "Oh, oh, I know the problem now. Come along, my lady! We can walk. Come on—let's walk, alright?"_

_She beckons for the door, but Jai shakes her head and combs her fingers through her tangled hair. "Of course you don't understand," she accuses. "You look your best without even trying, and you don't even want others to look."_

_The Sky spreads her arms. The fabric veiling them flows outward in response. "Nonsense, Jai! Oh, please don't look so glum!" She rests her arm over Jai's shoulders, and Jai has to blink very quickly for a moment. "Listen here, now. This is the important part. Are you ready? You have…" A dramatic pause. "…the best smile anyone has ever seen."_

_Jai rolls her eyes. "No."_

_"Yes, yes, you do. Don't tell me 'no' when I know it's true. And the prettiest girls are those who smile the most." Pir pokes her stomach. It tickles. "When your spirit is bright on the inside, it will shine on the outside. That's a well-known truth."_

_"Is it?" Jai asks, although she stifles a smile. "Is it really?"_

_"A secret truth," the Sky amends. "But true nevertheless. I'll have to teach you. Let's see…for instance!" Pir turns them to the pond at their side. The bejeweled birds pause their tittering to listen. "If I were to jump into the water here and dirty my fair dress and hair, by any chance would you still think me beautiful?"_

_"Of course," Jai says—because she reveres the Sky, as preordained, just as much as she might resent her. "Like I said, you always look your best, even when—"_

_"Good!" Pir exclaims. Her smile could be a lover to the sunlight._

_And with a shouted laugh, the lady takes a running leap—_

* * *

Over the course of a week, Jai learns the many reasons that Verde is known as, as Colonnello puts it, "one-hundred-percent _trash_, like seriously, I'm not even kidding here".

Nobody can genuinely be called trash, in her experience. It might be easier to say that without knowing Verde as well as the others do, but the point still stands. She's known plenty of people who've gotten on her nerves. But they were all individuals in their own right, and eventually she even started repeating their mistakes, so who was she to call them anything else?

Besides, some people just have bad beginnings. Bad in-betweens. Stubbornness to a fault. Brains made up of different shades.

Verde would probably fall into that last category there.

There's a certain brand of patience that's required when it comes to Verde—specifically, the brand that Reborn and the others seem to lack. Verde's a smart man, obviously. He's a genius in his field. His capabilities alone are mind-blowing. She wouldn't be surprised if he could make a machine that cures famine and water pollution all in one go.

Which he would never actually make. Probably because he wouldn't want to.

Jai learns a few things when she sticks around him for a while, helping Verde with that new big project of his. For instance: he doesn't really care about the subjects of everyday conversation. Like books. Movies. The weather.

Other people's well-being.

What he does care about is science, and math. Basically all of the technical studies of high concentration and diligence that she's never really bothered to touch.

But Verde has a plan, and as usual, his plans are brilliant. On the first day of the start of their cooperation, he spreads the plan out on her apartment floor, diagram after diagram, penned along a whole volume of glossy blueprints.

Jai's impressed, really. This kind of research takes years of dedication.

"The idea," the Lightning explains absently as he taps a text into his phone, "is for this new equipment to vastly amplify the capacities of the Dying Will Flame by decreasing its input and increasing its output into a singular—yet concentrated—directional force."

She studies the models he's drawn up. "Oh, cool! You're making a glove!"

Verde gives her a long look. It stretches out for miles. A person could get lost in it. "The idea is that when a person uses their Flames through the glove, they'll be able to use them more efficiently and for longer amounts of time while still maintaining the same Fiamma Voltage."

Jai rubs the back of her head. "Fiamma Voltage?"

"You're kidding me." In the blink of an eye, his research is rolled up and tucked beneath his arm again. "I'm not your elementary school teacher. Go find your friends and educate yourself properly before you try talking to me again." He sails out the window. Literally, on a sail, stretched over two metal stick-things to form a glider.

He manages to make Jai feel a little self-conscious, though. So she picks up her umbrella, braves the rain, and asks Reborn and Fon about it. They're found in Sawada's living room, waiting for Takeshi and the others to get back from school.

Fon smiles ever-patiently from where he's buried in his book. "Oh, Fiamma Volts? They're simply units of the power of your Dying Will Flames." He glances at her, possibly reading the confusion right off her face. "Comparable to, let's say—the logarithmic scale for the magnitude of earthquakes…"

"Or the gravity of the earth, newtons per kilogram," Reborn adds. His fingers are stained bright, like summertime, dabbing paint over the surface of what looks to be a hand grenade. It must be a present for Tsuna.

"Yes, that too. Fiamma Voltage is a form of measurement, essentially. The standard one, although there are some who argue against its reliability."

"Oh, okay." Jai steals the corner of Fon's rice cookie. "And it measures…what kind of power, again? Purity? Or is it, like, force of expulsion, or something?"

"Well, not quite. Try comparing it to electrical voltage."

She lets a pause settle in. A pair of frogs do their appropriate ribbitting in the distance.

Both the Storm and Sun look up from their work to scrutinize her.

"I like electrical voltage," she tells them. "I like to eat it for dinner sometimes, you know, with a bit of wasabi on the side, and maybe a dash of vinegar to mix things up—"

Fon laughs out loud before he can smother it into his book. Beside him, Reborn shakes his head, clearly disappointed.

"Yeah, you think I have any idea what electrical voltage is? Come on! Just explain it to me, real quickly." She lunges forward as Reborn reaches behind the sofa, most likely for his electrocution device. "Oh, come on, no need for that! Verbally! In words, just words!"

The Sun raises an eyebrow as he pulls out a whiteboard and a fake mustache.

Oh. Never mind. Not as terrifying as she expected.

He slaps the mustache on his face, whips out a marker, and proceeds to outline literally the entire concept of electrical voltage, potential energy per unit charge, electromotive force, and Faraday's Law.

Jai almost regrets coming to him—almost, but not quite. Science is actually pretty cool, and Reborn makes learning easy when he's not pressuring you with promises of excruciating punishment.

"Voltage fields, which exist across space, causes the attraction between a positive charge and a negative charge," he explains in full tutor-mode. "A volt is a single unit of electrical energy. An electric field is measured in the number of volts over a distance. Voltage describes this electric field in the strength of the field over the distance it spans. Obviously, in the case of Fiamma Voltage, this same kind of measurement can't apply, seeing as Fiamma Volts are not measured by the space between two points. Fiamma Volts don't exist naturally in space—we create them ourselves, which introduces a separate energetic field where wave energies can interact."

Obediently, Fon hands Reborn a yellow marker. He uses it to draw squiggly lines around a miniature depiction of himself. "Therefore a single Fiamma Volt is a single unit of wave energy, a wave field measures the number of these volts by the speed of their displacement rather than the distance they cover, and Fiamma Voltage is thus determined by the the strength of the field in relation to the vibration of the energy, or the frequency of it. The more power you focus into your Flames, the higher the frequency."

Thick black arrows connect all of the pictographs together. "Stronger force and impact, more Fiamma Volts, higher voltage. That would be the general gist of it, anyway." The hitman points the marker at her in a stern sweep. "Capisci?"

The details fly over her head—energy fields? Wave energy again? What the heck? But she does get the overall picture. It helps that Reborn is a good artist.

She laughs. Gives him the A-ok sign. "Capisco!"

Verde drops by again within the day, this time near midnight. Still at her apartment. "Now, are you informed?" he asks with his usual paper-flat face. Not even a 'hello'.

Jai wipes the rim of her sink. "Yep."

"Are you ready to make substantial contributions?"

"Ye-e-ep."

"Then I won't waste any more time." He whips out his papers again. "You will be the test subject for the majority of experiments regarding this project, of course, seeing as you have willfully volunteered—"

Jai taps the floor in front of them with her bare toes, in nothing but a tank top and plaid pants. With her toothbrush still twirling between her fingers. "Wait, now? Hold on, you wanna do this now? Shouldn't we be getting some sleep, or something?"

Slowly, the Lightning looks her up and down. Jai drops her gaze to his pacifier. It's getting all jolty inside, the fires snapping apart and in half. Looks like they're just about ready to make a breakthrough.

Maybe, she thinks—maybe trying to argue with him isn't all that great of an idea.

"I won't waste any more time," he repeats. "Will you or will you not hold up your end of our deal?"

If his voice wasn't static, she would think she'd hear a sneer. Or maybe sneers would be too dramatic for him.

She looks him up and down, too, and wonders how he was made. Today is the modern age. An era of progression. Guns are snapped together with sterner hands, bombs launched with the flick of a pin. So maybe men and boys can be glass-blown and metalworked these days, taken to auto-shops where their circuits are snipped and fused together. "You know," she starts to say.

Verde looks at her like a man looks at a fly.

"Well." Jai shrugs. "Alright, then. Continue."

* * *

"Is it going to be like this all season, or something?" Skull complains. His fingerpads leave long, white smears against the windowpane. Hopefully Sawada won't notice. "It's not fair! I mean, they're having clear skies in Tokyo right now, aren't they? So what're we? The _dumps?"_

Jai grins between a sip of tea. "Guess so, huh."

It's been pours non-stop these days. As if the kids in Namimori need any more lazy afternoons of boredom, cooped up inside their houses like this. As if sunlight is a nonrenewable resource and if they use all of it up at one time, it'll run out, and the entire solar system will wither for it.

Jai thinks about all the plants out there, getting root rot from all the flooding. She feels kind of bad about it.

With the weather turning dark, the town goes quiet. Reborn still makes his kids run panicking and frolicking through hail and thunderstorms, but nobody—not even him—can light any impressive explosions when the fuses go damp. He switches over to indoor smoke bombs and grueling study sessions.

Meanwhile, Takeshi's baseball games have been constantly rained out. Fuuta leaves his book of records with Bianchi sometimes—no use carrying it around so often while his ranking's guaranteed to be out of order.

The raindrops plink down on the metal throats of the gutters, each with a different pitch. It makes Jai wonder about Viper's song, Pioggia. Maybe it was composed when a person stopped to listen to a city, and how the rain made it shimmer and shine with clear, metallic incandescence, and that person was so inspired by this wonder of their waking world that they decided to jot those raindrops down in musical notation. Presumably with waterproof ink.

"So, Jai. What are you working on with that bastard?"

She snorts. Everyone has an affectionate name for Verde, apparently. Then again, Skull calls Reborn and Colonnello the same thing. "I don't really know the details, but it looks like a glove thing. Something about doubling your Flames? The roughs look pretty cool, anyway."

"A glove thing?"

"Yeah, but it's an enhancer." Similar to the video games Takeshi plays, where the playable hero can slip on a new pair of mithril boots and beat up monsters with triple the strength. She huffs with laughter at the thought.

Then Jai catches Skull's fingers picking at his collar. "What?" She nudges him. "What's up?"

"Nothing, lady! Geez!" He bats her away, almost knocking off his helmet. "I'm just thinking—"

His voice falters and cuts off, right there. Talk about suspense.

She frowns. "Yeah? Come on, what?"

"Look, I just—I'm just wondering—"

"Wondering?"

Skull groans. "Okay, I—I know you've got this deal going on with the bastard, but you know what he does with his successful experiments? Sells them, right? I mean, it's logical, he's an underground scientist. That's how he makes good cash. So he sells them through his network of all these mafia families who're on good terms with him—for, uh, whatever reason—and want to be the first to get their hands on…on whatever he's got, I guess. You followin'?"

Verde starts a project, finishes it, then sells the product to the mafia. Simple enough. "Yeah, go on."

"Right, well, the stuff Verde usually sells is weapons. New gun upgrades and drones and _robot squids_—" The Cloud shudders. Jai carefully assumes nothing. "Uh, you get the idea. So, anyway, sometimes his weapons end up being pretty damn useful. The Carcassa's got his drones, y'see. It's why those guys get in so many hits. And then there's the Triads on America's west coast—a whole string of them won their territories because they got their hands on these really weird capsules of Mist Flames—"

Oh.

She thinks she might be getting it now.

"You wondering whether Verde's project is worth what it's going to do to the underground," she concludes.

Skull rocks back on the windowsill. Somehow, for an infant, his shoulders always look sharp. Sharp as bone knots, jutting out through his motorbike leather. "Just wanna be sure you know what you're doin'," he mumbles.

Jai knocks on the side of his helmet. "Hey, it'll be fine! This whole glove-project doesn't look like it's all that harmful or anything. Just seems like something neat, to give people a boost."

Then again, maybe it isn't a good idea to give the mafia a boost in business.

Not that they're a bad people, necessarily. And at least they've learned how to use their Flames. But they also run with black markets and drugs and murder, so that's like giving a kid a torch and telling him to set himself on fire because it'll solve his boredom for him. It's no surprise that the mafia's grown up a little wrecked.

Actually, the mafia are just wrecked on principle. So scratch that.

Jai still has no idea how the knowledge of Flames ended up in their hands and no-one else's. It'd probably make for an interesting story.

"Unless you're really thinking that all of this is a bad idea," she adds in the end. "'Cause I haven't really thought it through, but if you—"

"No, Skull's just being paranoid."

Jai jolts hard enough to knock over the teacup in her lap. Luckily, there wasn't much left in it. "Lal Mirch," she wheezes.

Lal Mirch exhales as she lays out the last parts of her rifle. An array of black chips and shapes spaced with flawless geometric symmetry across the coffee table. "I've been sitting here for the past six seconds, Jai. Your senses are a disappointment."

She laughs. "You're joking! You guys just like to sneak up on me, don't you? You and Fon—"

"Don't try to kid yourself. Even _Skull_ saw me before you did."

Skull makes vague spluttering sounds through his helmet. His chest is already filling with building indignation. It's like inflating a balloon. "Don't _insult_ me—"

Lal Mirch turns back to Jai before he can get let any more of it loose. "Have you thought about doing some extra training? With Reborn, for instance? It would be a good idea, what with the Vindice hunting you down already."

Jai leans back against the cushions so hard, she can feel the wooden board creaking as it braces her. Her laughter spills with only the slightest panicked edge. "No-ope! I'd like to experience happiness again in my life, actually!"

"With me, then?"

For a moment, she considers it. Training with Lal Mirch—

Would not actually be any better. "Nope!"

"Alright." To her relief, the Rain drops the subject. Her quirk of a smile looks satisfied. She takes so much pride in striking fear into the hearts of others, Jai will never understand it.

"Anyway," she continues, sliding her gun together with soundless ease, "about what you were discussing earlier—Verde never sells to any of the Vongola's enemy parties. If he did, he'd be losing us as an influential customer. Not to mention our commodity chains have provided funding for his projects in the past. So, in the end, besides the few products that might get smuggled out to other organizations, the weapons Verde makes are nearly entirely at our command."

Skull leaps to his feet. "But—the Carcassa don't work for your command!"

Her sherry eyes lock onto his with vicious clarity. Like the rifle half-formed in her hands, they meet their mark. "That," Lal Mirch states, "is not my problem."

He wavers. Visibly. Then slumps, and sits down again.

The Rain narrows her gaze. "You don't even like the Carcassa. You're not affiliated with them by choice. Why care what happens to their lot?" In the background, Jai contents herself with the simple act of listening as she wipes the spots of tea off her sweater.

"Doesn't change the fact that I'm tied down."

Lal Mirch snorts. "What a weak excuse. Get out of it, then."

"Wh—Y—You know it's not that simple! I can't just stroll away—I mean, I don't have any safe connections. If I tried to get on a different side, I'd just get whacked!"

"That hesitation of yours is what makes Reborn and Colonnello want to drive your face into the ground," she points out. "I'm surprised they haven't beaten it out of you yet." With a small cock of her head, she turns to Jai. "Did they ever tell you why they have such strong compulsions to smash Skull's head in every time they see him?"

"Nah, never." Jai grins at Skull as he waves his arms. Stutters out objections. "Why?"

"We used to take missions together, all seven of the Arcobaleno—excluding Colonnello. He wasn't one of us back then. Anyway, these were dangerous hits. Covert operations. It was some of the most thrilling work we'd ever done in our lives. We targeted top dogs in governments, the best Mist-users, the most elusive mafia dons—things that get them instant execution with one slip-up." Lal Mirch jabs her thumb in the Cloud's direction. "And somehow, on each mission, this kid found a way to screw up each and every one of them."

Jai bursts into laughter. "For real?"

"I-I did not!" Skull squawks. "She's exaggerating! I-I _made_ each and every one of their successes!"

The corner of Lal Mirch's mouth curls up. It looks almost wicked. "Sometimes Reborn would give him specific orders just to see if he'd stay out of the way. But then he'd trip a wire or make noise in the ventilation shafts. When we told him to keep watch outside, one of the guards would spot him. One time we told him to stay at our base and he somehow managed to make himself a _hostage_."

"Okay, that—that one wasn't my fault! There was this guy who snuck in because _Viper's_ security systems weren't—"

"You drove everyone on that team insane," Lal Mirch finishes, her voice dry. "Fon and I had to physically restrain Reborn from ripping you in half. There wasn't a single time when you didn't fail to compromise us, honestly. I can't even think of one."

Jai cackles. Pauses for the sake of needing air. Her cheeks are starting to ache. "Ohhh, Skull—" She buries her laughter into a pillow.

Skull's muffled groan sounds from somewhere nearby. "Christ, Jai, shut _up."_

"No, no, it's okay." Her voice comes out as a wheeze. Those old trains in Hokkaido—they make the same sound. "No, it's fine, Skull. Really. We all make—" She splutters. "Mistakes—"

"It's not that funny," he hisses. "I wasn't trained as a hitman like the rest of them, and they still expected me to—to 'pull my weight', or whatever! It wasn't fair!"

"I wasn't trained either," Lal Mirch points out.

"Yeah, but you were _COMSUBIN,_ and I was just—Jai." Skull puts his head in his hands. "Jai, I swear to God."

"Sorry," Jai says, even though she's grinning. She covers her mouth with both hands. "It's not funny, sorry. I'm—" She clears her throat. "I'm done, I stopped. Okay."

He stabs his finger close to her cheek. "Okay. _Good_. Don't laugh."

"I won't." She pats his shoulder and chuckles. Coughs, she means. "Sorry. Here, let's…change the subject, alright? What were we talking about before?"

Lal Mirch eyes the Cloud a moment longer, as if unwilling to let him off so easily. "Verde?" she hazards.

"Yeah, uh, Verde!" Skull crosses his arms. Huffs a breath. "That's a horrible change of subject."

Jai breaks into laughter again.

"No, for real, though! Man, that guy's a jerk. You know part of the reason why I bother stressing about him is 'cause he's one of those guys you gotta watch out for, y'know? No damn conscience. He's like…" Skull grasped for his words in the air. They squirm away from him. "Like, I dunno, the guys in the Manhattan Project who—who invented the atomic bomb. One of these days he's going to do something stupid on purpose and destroy things, and then what happens?"

"What _is_ the atomic bomb, anyway?" Jai asks.

Their heads slowly rotate in her direction, as if their necks are clockwork. Even Lal Mirch looks distinctly surprised.

"Wh—Wh—What do you mean, 'what's the atomic—'" Skull thrusts an accusatory finger. "No way. No. You can't just _not know _what an atomic bomb is. What kind of education did you have? Just, like, _none at all_, or—"

"Honestly, you've been living in Japan for the past year." Lal Mirch shakes her head a little. "Hiroshima? Nagasaki? World War II?"

"What about 'em?"

The Rain pinches the bridge of her nose. "Have you _heard_ of them."

Jai leans forward, propping her jaw in her hands. "Hey, I know they got destroyed some decades ago. Namimori's got a memorial next to one of the old train stations. But what's the difference between, let's say, a regular bomb and an atomic—"

"Alright, that's it." Skull hops off the couch. "I gotta show it to you. Um, wait, gimme a sec." He scrambles out the doorway, eyes hunting left and right.

Meanwhile, the Rain gets to her feet, all her gunparts tucked neatly into a bag. "Well, he'll educate you, I suppose." Lal Mirch gives her one of her dubious looks. "Or maybe you're just a lost cause. Either way—"

"Aw, hey!"

"Don't complain. You _know _you're a barbarian. Anyway, I actually came by to tell you that I'm leaving early tomorrow."

It's strange for Lal Mirch to say goodbye, or even give any sort of heads-up. Fon does. Colonnello does. Viper and Verde don't, but they're not around most of the time anyways. Lal Mirch usually just hops out of town and lets everyone else assume she's been called back for a job.

Lal Mirch reads the question right off Jai's face. "CEDEF's come up with something important. Don't expect me back for a while, is what I wanted to say."

"Oh, I see." Jai gives her a little wave. "Be careful, then! Stay safe!"

Sherry eyes crease and her brow furrows. It crinkles the bite of her scar. "Of course," Lal Mirch says, because really, she doesn't expect anything less of her own performance. She nods at Jai and flits out through the window again.

_It's a soldier's goodbye_, Colonnello told her once while his partner was in earshot. _In COMSUBIN, you know, that's how it is. A single nod. Just goes to show that she doesn't know how to lighten up_—at that point Lal Mirch slapped him on the back of his head, sword-sharp and flustered and irritable all over again.

Skull toddles back into the room, this time with a cellphone balanced against his hip. He leaps onto the couch to share the screen with her. "This is Sawada's phone," Jai points out.

He shrugs. "You ever seen the video of Hiroshima and Nagasaki getting blown up?" But Jai doesn't need to answer no. His finger's already tapped the arrow-button.

She leans over and watches a chipped, black-and-white scene of a filthy cloud rising up from the ground, bubbling up, pooling into a grey, sterile sky. The heat ripples outward. It changes to a clip of a house in a field, crumbling into the dust all the way to its foundation. The walls are made of wood and stone, but the blast melts it like soft pita bread, scattering it for the canaries.

The scene switches over to a pan of—well, mostly rubble. There's smoke, too, but it doesn't seem to fit. It floats far too purely.

To be honest, Jai didn't expect that. She always thought it was multiple smaller bombs, not just one big one that ends up being powerful enough to destroy everything. "That must've been miles," she says out loud.

"Yeah, you think a regular bomb can do that? No way." Skull pushes a button. The video speeds up and skims over burns and scars, bodies charred and prostate and pixelated through the weary face of a camera. He slows the speed again to show a second unfurling of the explosion, but Jai can't help but feel like she's skipped over something important.

"And they were all civilians?" she asks.

"Pretty much, yeah. It killed thousands of people."

"Why did they drop them—the bombs—in the first place?"

Skull glances at her. The video in his hands shows trees disintegrating in the wind, steel and stone fading into the future. "Dunno. I never really bothered with the details of history. They teach it different depending on the country, so it's pretty much useless, y'know?"

He points at the image of a little boy with dried meat instead of skin. "Both these bombs dropped in 1945. Anyway, this is what I was talking about earlier. Obviously the guys who made these things should never have come up with them in the first place."

Jai frowns and watches an old man lie back in a hospital bed. With wounds like those, he probably didn't survive the hour, much less the night. "But with our Flames, we all have the power to do damage like that."

True, isn't it?

She could. Takeshi could. Tsuna could. Jai's old friends could've destroyed the world twice over and played football on its ashes.

"Well, yeah, true." Skull leans against her knee, skipping through parts of the video again. "But it's not like we would, would we? Besides maybe Verde would, but, you know. That's kind of my _point."_

* * *

As a rule, Jai is terrible at mathematics, some sciences, and things that just involve numbers strung together, in general. She's bad at working with them and she doesn't like working with them, which is why she doesn't work with them at all.

Her friend Lanka was the opposite. He built shrines and temples in honor of the numbers in his head that apparently spun the world on its marbled table. She never understood it. There was a time when he hoarded masses of forest scraps in his den, drawing scraggy ink over the spirals of pinecones and the separation of firs.

He was a good guy, but also a nerd. A huge nerd.

It was interesting when he explained his findings, but those findings never really stuck to her head. Even though she could memorize whole conversations of Greek, French, and Persian. So it wasn't really a memory problem.

Jai figures that it's just how she is. Some people sway to one thing, other people to another. It goes the same with styles of learning—she learns languages quicker when she can talk with them, and learns a sword quicker if she can wield one. When she first started figuring out how to heal, her mentor dropped a list of terms in her lap. Told her to memorize all of them. Muscles, bones, types of tissues, a name for each shade and temper of blood, and then a list of common poisons to top the cake.

Hatz handled it well enough. But back then, Jai was terrible—she couldn't remember the difference between a vein and an artery until they started healing wounded animals. Starting with birds, leading up to horses and boars. Then the memory came easier than breathing.

As a rule, Jai doesn't work with complex numbers, and doesn't think if she forgets how to move.

Here's a situation that will kill her: Verde wants her to come up with complicated formulas. He wants her to sit at a table and think by shifting a pencil around in her fingers.

Nah. Sounds like hell.

Instead, she puts herself to better use. Verde always comes to her with a progress report and a predicament: 72% done graphing the modifications, currently working on tracking the body's wave system using energetic frequencies. Or: 27% in-progress constructing the model, currently researching the manifested form of wave energy and its relation to regular flame.

So, since she can't do his math or figure out the mess of calculations in his head, Jai throws him theories. Concepts. Ideas that people explained to her over the course of the road, which she never really understood but memorized anyway, since they're supposed to make sense of the world.

For example, the so-called flow of wave energy inside the hand follows a network like blood does, pulsing through scraggly, branching leylines. Unlike with blood, there's no returning flow of circulation—when you pull your Flames back instead of releasing them, the rivers change direction, and the lines in your hand run bare.

The scientists of today think that the lines are thickest in the fingers of your rings. That's not exactly true. They swell and tangle together in your palm, where Flames are most easily concentrated—so when a ring is put on, the Flames can shoot outward in a heartbeat, like bullets, glowing hot as coals through your fingertips.

Jai draws Verde her own diagram of the network. She's a terrible artist, but she knows it by heart. It's an important thing to remember when she needs to rebuild it in someone's hands.

"Interesting," he mutters, pouring over it with his notebooks. "I could use this, with the right application…"

"You think so?" she asks. He ignores her, like always.

Sometimes Jai feels she's being exploited. When a chicken lays an egg, and the farmer kicks the chicken aside to pick up the egg and eat it for breakfast—yeah, it's that kind of feeling. The chicken's feelings.

Regardless, she ends up giving him what he needs. Little pieces of information: Flames can increase in power if their expelled at greater speeds. Dying Will Flames can be combined—they're never as strong as regular Flames, though, and no, she's never done it before. Flames take the form of _fire_ and not water because fire is the form of life, heart, and will (Verde dismisses this one on the grounds of having No Conclusive Evidence).

Verde doesn't offer her much in return, but he does try to teach her the computer. Jai thinks he's disgusted by her ignorance.

"This is a search engine." He points at the long white bar at the top of the screen. "When you type in there and press ENTER, you can look up terms on the online database."

"But this is the code for the website, right?" Jai points to the ' -whatever' that already fills the space. "Can I just erase it and type over it?"

The scientist's lip curls at her. "Obviously."

She laughs. "I've never really needed a computer, you know. I've always just used books."

"And you couldn't have found a book on the function of computers?"

Verde disappears into the kitchen before she can answer, presumably to refill his thermos. Jai clicks on the white bar, hits the BACKSPACE, and types in the name of their town, NA-MI-MO-RI.

A picture of the central district pops up. "Wow!" She lifts the screen onto her lap. "Hey, Verde! This is really cool!" She tries again. NAMIMORI TAKESUSHI, TA-KE-SU-SHI—

The front of Tsuyoshi's shop appears, as well as the sign.

"Wooow!" Jai scrolls down to look at the links. "Man, this is neat! Hey, Verde!" You couldn't really look up restaurant reviews in libraries. The internet must be much more useful with these sorts of things. "Verde! C'mere, look at this!"

He walks over, his footsteps rapping against the kitchen tiles. Verde has a distinct walk. Professional and clipped, but kind of forceful, as if he's always irritated at something or another. "Alright, give me back the laptop."

"Wait, wait, hold on! At least let me look up Namimori Middle."

In a blur of spotless white, his hand swoops forward and snatches it out of her grasp.

Jai lunges for it in vain, and laughs. "Aw!"

"If I had known you were going to be obnoxiously loud about it, I would have never shown it to you in the first place." Verde settles himself on the top of the couch. His fingers are already twitching all over the keyboard. "Get back to work."

Him and his borderline-cruelty. "But," Jai says.

He flicks a dismissive wrist at her. "Work."

Jai heaves a sigh. Sure, the work is fun, but only because the content is stimulating. It'd be better if this guy were the one to make it fun, instead.

If Verde just didn't like her, that would be alright. Viper and Joshima don't particularly like her either. They're pretty obvious about it. But at least she can look them in the eyes, listen to them and be listened to. Verde makes it clear that he thinks absolutely nothing of anyone.

How do you talk to a person like that?

You don't, really.

"Are you working?" he drawls.

"Yeah, hold on," she replies, and stands up to make some tea.

* * *

It rains and rains and rains and Tsuyoshi has started the kindly habit of leaving umbrellas for his customers next to the doorway, just in case they were unfortunate enough to forget one. People start cracking jokes to her about monsoon season. "Maybe we should all start moving uphill, don't you think?" they say as they file into the restaurant, shining brighter than alloys in their wet, waterproof glossiness.

It rains until Fuuta breaks and tapes crayon drawings of summer days onto the windows of Sawada's house. Each one has a stocky green tree with a woodpecker hole and a sun wearing fashionable shades. Reborn actually starts to pity the kids, even as he kicks Tsuna and his friends out into the drowning world day by day for long hikes and marathons. To build character, as he says.

Fon pities them all and buys them a year's worth of cold medicine.

Jai pities Namimori in general. Japan might promise its people 350 millimeters of rain per month, but there's some injustice in having it all concentrated in a small town as theirs.

"Do you like the rain, Verde?" Jai asks without expecting much of an answer.

He scribbles into his notebook. There's a sharp smell in the air, sticking to Tsuna's living room walls—the black oils and copper sulphate clinging to his gloves.

"Right-o." Jai rolls onto his feet. "How's your thing coming along?"

"My _thing_," Verde replies, like the act of physical moving his lips appalls him, "is ready for a test trial. Come here and put this on."

He sets a long navy glove on the floor. Wired and rigged. Wicked at the fingertips. It looks a bit like a centipede, or a ribcage.

It'll probably eat her forearm if she wears it.

"We start small, and in stages. This is the first step. These wires—" He taps the system of lines that look like veins on the fabric. "—will connect with your wave system, thus allowing me to measure the levels of your energy flow—" He points at his laptop screen. "—from here."

"Neat." She picks up the glove. Flips it around. "So, should I?"

"What are you waiting for?"

It slides across her skin. The material is oily and cool, smoother than silk. Her fingers curl one by one. A perfect fit.

The wires light up in red, shocking against the blue. "How's it look?" she asks.

Verde's gaze flickers around his screen, ignoring her entirely. He taps a few letters on the keyboard. The fabric of the glove suddenly tightens, wrapping her wrist to the verge of snapping it in three.

Jai frowns at him, flexing against the pressure. "Easy there."

He sips his espresso. "Try channeling your Sun Flames through that hand."

She does, just like normal. Her Flames shimmer and spit stars. The lines on his laptop screen leap up and squiggle around. They look like the bars on Tsuna's stereo that jump whenever a beat of music plays. "Does it work?"

"I'm not sure yet. Decrease your power."

The yellow fire simmers down into glow, but the lines on the graph go flatline. "It failed," Verde says with a click of his tongue. "It's not sensitive enough—I'll have to tweak the original graph. No matter. That was only the first prototype. You can take it off now."

Darn.

"Alright." Jai tugs at the glove. It stays stuck, sunken into her skin. "Oh. Hold on."

"Hm. The clamp needs to be released. Just a moment." Verde types in some sort of code. "Let's see…18245, release."

[18256 CONFIRMED,] a voice chirps from the palm of the glove. ["SUSPENSEFUL SELF-DESTRUCTION ACTIVATION SEQUENCE" WILL OCCUR IN 60 SECONDS. 60.]

Jai laughs. "What?"

The scientist grunts. "Typo."

[59. 58.]

"This thing's gonna blow up now?" She pats the glove. "How big's the explosion gonna be?"

Verde gets up, brushing the dust off his coat. His tone is airy. Entirely nonchalant. "Oh, it'll be enough to disintegrate the house, I believe. Quite the predicament. But at least I have no need for a failed prototype anyway. Now, I have another appointment to get to…"

"Hey, hey, hey, _no_, you have to tell me how to—" Jai watches him swing out the window, coffee and all, without a glance back in her direction.

Alrighty.

[54. 53.]

She tugs harder at the glove. The red lights blink back at her. "Hey, Colonnello! Reborn!" she shouts. Those two were somewhere in the house last time she checked. "I'm going to explode!"

"Don't do it," Colonnello hollers back, his voice muffled.

Ah, Colonnello. Helpful at his best.

Jai can't help but grin. "No, seriously, I can't stop it! Verde put a bomb on my arm! It's going to blow up the house in—"

[48. 47.]

"—about forty-five seconds! Do you know how to deactivate this sort of thing?"

Tsuna overhears and lets out an incoherent screech from upstairs. Three sets of footsteps tumble down the stairs—the thump at the bottom is probably the Sky falling face-first, poor guy. He skids into the living room, Reborn peeling a tangerine on top of his shoulder. _"Jai,"_ he wails.

She laughs. "Sorry."

Takeshi beams at her. "It's fine, don't worry about it! We'll figure this out." He slaps Gokudera on the shoulder. "You're good with bombs, right?"

The Storm scowls back. "Don't touch me, you damn—"

"Oi, quit arguing and get on with it, kora. This house's about to burn down." Colonnello squeezes between their legs and hops over to Jai. He kicks her glove with his boot. "This thing, huh? Why does Verde have to wire explosions into everything?"

Reborn pinches Tsuna's ear. "Go on, Dame-Tsuna. If you don't solve this, we're all going to die. And I refuse to die—" He yanks hard. "—by of the actions of some inferior, pubescent worm."

Tsuna drops to his knees. Rivers of sweat pour from his forehead. "I-I don't know how to deactivate a bomb!"

"Leave this to me, Jyuudaime!" Gokudera yanks at Jai's arm. He scowls at her. "If you hadn't trusted that green-haired bastard in the first place, we wouldn't be in this mess at all, you know."

She pats him on the back. "Now, that was uncalled for. Besides! I have full faith in you, so what's there to worry about?"

"Exactly!" Takeshi exclaims. They high-five.

"If the house blows up, Mom's gonna be so mad," Tsuna mumbles into his hands.

"For Christ's sake, kora, when _we_ blow up, this house'll be the least of your problems. Hell, you won't even have any problems at all. How 'bout that?"

"Is that supposed to make me feel better?!"

Gokudera digs his fingers into the glove—and, in the process, her forearm. Ow. "The wires are probably hidden in the fabric," he mutters, "but if I tear open the fabric, I might pull the wrong wires. How did Verde even…"

Reborn hands Jai a slice of his tangerine. She pops it into her mouth.

The swing of an opening door turns their heads. Bianchi frowns down at all of them, goggles firmly fixed in place. "What's all this supposed to be?"

"We're deactivating a bomb," Takeshi replies.

"Aha."

With a growl, Gokudera whips out a knife and begins to saw away at the fabric. The fibers don't even budge. "I can't let Jyuudaime down," he muttered, fires alight in his eyes.

The countdown continues with exaggerated cheer. [28. 27. 26.]

"Step aside, little brother. I'll handle this." Bianchi steps forward with a steaming plate of lobster in her hands. As expected, the steam is not white, but rather an intoxicating shade of green. "No bomb can handle my special Lobster Thermidor!" She bats her eyes at Reborn, him and his cheeks bulging with tangerines. "Fresh from the oven of love! Take _this!"_

The Lobster Thermidor lands on the glove with a splat. Parsley tumbles to the side, swooning in distress.

[…15. 14. 13.]

"You took away our time?!" Tsuna shrieks.

Bianchi folds her arms. "So it's allergic to seafood?"

"We're dead! Doomed! I'm sorry, Mom! I've failed you!"

Reborn kicks him in the head. "Quit panicking, Dame-Tsuna." He slides to the floor, Leon winding around his hand. "If you need to get something done, then do it through your Dying Will."

Tsuna whips around. "W-Wait a minute—"

The bullet buries itself into his forehead.

[7. 6.]

Jai chews another tangerine and watches Tsuna's Flames burst from the wound, bright and pure. Lovelier than the sun. "DEACTIVATE THE BOMB WITH MY DYING WILL!" he roars, his clothing torn from his chest.

[5. 4.]

Takeshi whoops. Throws up his hands. "Yeah, Tsuna! You go!"

[3.]

With a cry, he lunges for Jai's glove and tears open the fabric with nothing but his nails. The network of wires glistens in rivulets of gold.

[2.]

He reaches for them. Jai holds her breath.

[1.]

With a small snap, Tsuna breaks the second-smallest wire. Silence falls over the living room.

[FAILURE TO PROCEED WITH "SUSPENSEFUL SELF-DESTRUCTION ACTIVATION SEQUENCE",] the speaker in the glove says, sounding oddly disappointed. [SYSTEM WILL NOW SHUT DOWN.]

It eases itself from Jai's bruised skin. She peels it off and drops it on the floor. Like blue, tattered seaweed. "Good job!" she praises. "You did it!"

They all watch as Tsuna drops to the ground. Boneless, with sweat still raining down his face—nobody'd ever doubted him for a second. The Flame on his forehead dwindles to a trace of smoking ash.

Colonnello looks around. "Let's go kill Verde. Who's with me?"

Reborn and Gokudera raise their fists into the air.

* * *

Jai finds Viper on the windowsill of her apartment room. The night is darkening from heaven to horizon, but the streets are bright. The glow of his silhouette switches between red and green right alongside the traffic light.

His hands are lit up by a soft little flame, which pulses. Flutters. Sings. It's a vaguely familiar tune. A tender one.

The Mist tears his triangle-eyes away from the townscape below to glance at her, in a careless sort of way. The song lowers in volume until it's nothing more than a whisper in the walls. "Jai," he says. "You look like the idiot that you are. How long do you plan on standing there like that?"

She laughs and strolls over. "C'mon, I literally just got back!" Her foot bangs against the sill as she tries to sit down. Ow, no. And Viper definitely just smiled at her pain—what a sadist, has she mentioned that? "How come you weren't around for dinner? Tsuyoshi's place? It was pretty fun—we finally got Rokudo's gang to eat with us."

"I'm not surprised. It was bound to happen eventually."

"Really?"

"Between that, and facing an eternity of constant nagging…"

"Alright, alright, I gotcha." Jai feels courageous. She pokes him in the shoulder. Contrary to her expectations, he doesn't retaliate. Huh. "So why'd you skip out, anyway? I'm pretty sure I invited you earlier. I did, didn't I?"

Viper flicks his wrists, and 'Pioggia' fizzles out of the air, leaving behind a noticeable quiet that reminds her of the static on a radio. He scoffs. "Has it ever occurred to you that some people, specifically foreigners, will actually get tired of sushi at some point? Foreigners like me, and not including you?" His voice is dry enough to shrivel her skin. "Shocking, isn't it?"

"Hey, hold on—that means you're implying that Tsuyoshi's food is average. It's not average! It's fantastic!"

"I'm not eating from the same Japanese menu for every dinner in Namimori." He jabs a finger at her face. "No. Not another word. I'm tired of eating from the same restaurant over and over again. Absolutely ridiculous."

Jai cringes. "You'll hurt Tsuyoshi's feelings."

"He's a big boy now," Viper simpers. "He can take care of himself."

She laughs, following his gaze down to the comets of cars flying across the road. A black car, a silver car, a red car—a blue bus, too. Lots of buses loitering down there. Heads of black and brown locks look like tiny beads, or bubbles, bobbing up and down in the sea.

She turns back to Viper. He's already watching her. Coolly. Blankly. "I'm leaving for my mission tonight," he says.

"Oh yeah, that's today." Jai straightens up. "Do you think you're ready?"

The edges of his mouth twist a bit. "Yes. I've become…strong enough."

"Good, then!"

He simply nods in reply.

She scratches the back of her head. "Do you want me to say goodbye to the other guys, or did you already—"

Viper rolls his eyes. "There's no need for that."

"Well, hey, alright." She waves a little. "Then try to have fun! Be careful! You'll come back soon, right?"

He rises to his feet slowly, like his limbs might fail him at any moment. "If you think your concern is touching, it's not," he says, exasperated. Annoyed. The traffic light turns green again, the cars howl beneath them, and his eyes shine yellow. The same shade as the outer ring of a dandelion. (Sometimes weeds were pretty, too.) "You're quite the unfortunate fool. I have no doubt you'll go bankrupt later in life."

Jai props her cheek on her fist and laughs, startled. "Hey, come on! What kind of farewell is that? At the risk of sounding like Fon—" She waggles her finger. "Money sure isn't everything, you know?"

Viper doesn't respond. He stares at the nearby buildings instead, at the quaint potted plant sitting next to the window of the apartment directly across from hers. Jai studies him, and sees nothing particularly wrong, not including how sleepy Phantasma looks.

She wonders if he knows something she doesn't. Maybe he doesn't want to go. Maybe he's just thinking of something to say. "You're going to be fine, right?" she asks.

His arms shift beneath his cloak. "There's a lot at stake, with this one."

Jai thinks back to that afternoon in the rain, when Viper's eyes glowed and his fury vibrated the air, and she watched him with a deep, dark pit forming in her stomach. "You're going to be fine," she says. It's an assurance. A statement. For her, for him, for anybody. "You'll pull through, you know. It'll turn out alright."

Viper's face twists. Changes. Furrowed brows to tight lips to smiling eyes to nothing—and then it's all wiped away. His hand pokes out of the flaps of his cloak and blurs.

Her reflexes save her. She lifts her own hand into the air. Something metal catches between her fingers. She lowers them.

Two bronze coins.

Twenty yen.

Jai looks back up to find Viper hovering above the sill. Arms folded. "Until we meet again," he declares, scarlet gaze rested on hers.

She frowns. "But wh—"

In a swirl of mist, a twist and bend of reality, Viper is gone.

Jai lifts her head to inspect the coins. Wait, she'd wanted to say. You forgot your money. On purpose.

Strange, isn't it? It's not like him to show gratitude.

She rubs a coin against her forefinger and thumb, pretending there's some dirt that needs to be rubbed off. No need, of course. Both of the coins are spotless. Viper keeps his treasured money in pristine condition.

She pockets them and moves to close the window. Maybe she'll throw these in a fountain, or something. For good luck, and all that.

The wooden chair disintegrates behind her.

* * *

"Put this on."

"Will it explode again?"

"No."

"Electrocute me again?"

"No."

"Break my fingers, like last time?"

"It's perfected. Just put it on."

Jai sighs. Puts on the glove. This time, the lines light up in brilliant cyan. She wonders if the color really makes that much of a difference. "Right, it's on." As routine dictates, her Flames swirl into the palm of her hand and leak outward—

A wisp flows from her fingertips. She jerks back.

Verde taps his laptop with a pencil, seated at the edge of her bed. "That's supposed to happen. Keep going."

Her Sun Flames feel cool. They're not supposed to feel cool. Fire is hot by nature. Yet as the warmth courses through her skin, it separates, fans out through the fabric of the glove before knitting together again, and the result—

Jai waves her hand through the air, and stares at the tail of smoke which follows.

A person's Flames never naturally gives off smoke. It ignites and disappears without a trace at the person's will. Regular fire smoked, sure, but it wasn't made of the same energy.

This smoke dancing in her palm—she can control this.

"This," Jai declares as she makes another trail, "is impossible."

For the first time, she sees Verde's satisfied smile. "Not anymore."

She drags her fingers through the air again, making rivers of translucent veils. Through the glove, they feel fainter, like a ghost of her power. The swirls, if she wills it, linger in the air, just like spirits.

Jai lets the smoke wreath around her arms, raising hairs across her skin. "This is amazing," she realizes out loud. "I had no idea you could—ow. Hey."

Verde's mosquito zooms off, trailing her own blood in its wake. Its creator gestures at the long new gash across her shoulder. "Heal that and tell me how much effort it takes."

"Sure thing." She gathers the smoke in her gloved hand (it's so fluffy, too) and guides it to the scratch. The skin knits together peacefully. In its place is a faint dark mark. A scar.

It's been a long time since she's messed up and made a scar. "That's a first," she says.

Verde's brow furrows. "Well?"

"It doesn't heal as well." Jai makes more smoke, repeats the process. Slowly, the line fades back into the browner tones of her skin. "Okay, there we go. Just needed more Flames."

He rises to his feet, still frowning. "You needed to use more Flames? You're saying that the smoke doubled the effort needed, rather than halved it?" His mouth thins into a line of its own. "That's not supposed to happen. The smoke is supposed to have the same amount of power—" He whips out a long black stick and tosses it to her. "Channel your Flames into this. With the glove."

Jai does as she's told. The screen on the end of the stick flashes twice. "860FV," she reads.

Verde taps something into his laptop. The clamps inside her glove ease up. "Now take the glove off and do the same thing. Use the same amount of Flames and don't worry about the power."

She grabs the stick with her bare hand. Does it again. "Now it's 1722FV."

His face darkens. "It's a failure, then."

"Really?" Jai shakes the glove in front of her. "But what about the smoke? _Nobody_ I know has ever changed the form of the manifestation of energy before! That's gotta count for something, yeah?"

"No, because the smoke is weaker than the actual fire."

"But it's beautiful!"

The Lightning scoffs at her with full force. "Do you think I'm doing this for the arts? Wrong. I'm selling to other families. I need a weapon, not some pretty accessory for theatrical effects."

"Still, I wouldn't call it a failure." She slips on the glove again. Yellow light curls through the air, kissing the tip of her nose. "Hey, if you don't like it, do you think I can keep this?"

When Verde doesn't reply right away, Jai glances over again.

He's already gone.

* * *

Tsuna's stereo sits on a bookshelf next to the fireplace. It's dusty and beat-up, but it can still play mixtapes and orchestra music. Sawada puts it on occasionally while she cooks complex dinners—she listens to big Western operatic music, the kind that riles you up and makes you feel like a queen. "_Nella fantasia_," she'll sing, right along with the violins, "_io vedo un mondo giustooo_,"—except her accent is so horrible that it makes Jai laugh every time. She can't help it.

Other than that, the stereo doesn't really get used. At least, it doesn't really get used until Skull discovers it.

He puts on old rock-and-roll CDs and cycles through them every week. Unfortunately, none of the others appreciate his music tastes. Lal Mirch doesn't like music. Colonnello likes top radio hits. Fon likes anything soothing, like piano recordings, and Viper and Verde don't share their preferences with anyone.

Tsuna and Rokudo's gang have no particular taste. Gokudera actually likes Sawada's operas. Takeshi's weird and listens to anime openings. Ryohei likes Korean pop. Lambo screams along with metal, which irritates the heck out of everyone else—Jai finds it hilarious.

She doesn't really know what she likes at first. Folk songs, maybe. Something simple, without a lot of messy noise.

Reborn considers jazz to be the highest of all genres, obviously, and will beat Skull up if he plays his music too loud. As a result, the Cloud never turns the volume any higher than 1. So, essentially, nobody can hear it unless they're sitting right next to the speakers. That's where Skull likes to hang out.

He's the one to introduce her to the wonders of music in technology. After all, it's rain season, and music's perfect for lazy days. "Put this on," he says, snapping the headphones over her head. "We're going to find out what kind of music you like."

She gives him a thumbs-up, since he's already put them on for her. The soft leather feels comfortable around her ears. Rainfall sounds soft and muffled, like voices smothered in snow. "Gonna play something?"

"Yeah, hold on. Okay. Try this one." He turns a dial.

A masculine voice wails in agony through her ears. Cymbals clash in the background. Jai pulls one of the ear pads back and frowns at Skull. "Sounds like an intense funeral procession."

Skull brings the volume down again and puts his hands on his hips. "Oh, come on! That's the best music there is!" He puffs up. "It's the kind of stuff _I'm_ into, after all."

"Nah," she replies, and dissolves into laughter. Oh, the look on his face. "Here, put on another one! I'll find something good, I swear."

"Fine, whatever." He slides in a different CD. "What about this?"

A slow instrumental tune begins to play. At least the beat is nice. _I'm standing on a rooftop, looking down_, a girl sings, with the reediest voice in the world. _Will you love me even as I fall? Death is beginning of our romance—_

Jai leans back. "That's incredibly depressing."

Skull snickers into his hand. "You want a new one?"

"Yeah. _Yeah. _Hurry."

He shuffles through the CDs. Switches them out. Jai finds herself listening to…she's not really sure what she's listening to. But it's fast, and pretty hardcore. "What's this?"

"Uh, American rap music." Skull pulls his neck forward, studying her close. "You like it?"

"It's alright, kind of." It'd be fitting to play if she were striding about in the city or something. But, still. Not quite her style. "Isn't there anything else?"

He groans. "You're just not happy with anything, are you?"

"Hey, don't give up yet! You've only tried four."

"Three. But I doubt we're going to find anything in here—this collection is terrible!" Skull tugs off his helmet to run a hand through his hair. His painted lips purse together as he digs through the CDs. "More rap over here, opera music, more opera music…okay, here's Fon's meditation disc, I have no idea how that got in there. Rock, rock, jazz, even more opera—"

Jai leans over and picks one up at random. The front cover shows someone sloshing a beer over another person's head. "Man, who buys these in the first place? Here, look at this. Sawada wouldn't buy this, would she?"

The Cloud laughs. "The _dad_ did, probably."

To be honest, the elusive identity known as 'Tsuna's dad' doesn't have all that great of a taste. (His beer collection that Lal Mirch found—and destroyed—in a hole in the wall wasn't good quality, either. So hey.)

"Oi, wait, this is Tchaikovsky…Try listening to this one. Maybe you like Luce's kind of music."

Before Jai can ask who Luce is, Skull slips the CD into its slot and turns the dial. The strings start gradually at first, rising and falling. An orchestra that breathes.

It's a nice sound, for sure.

"Switch?"

Jai holds up a hand. "No, wait. This is better than the other ones so far." She closes her eyes for a moment. "Hm, yeah, this is good. I like this."

"Whew, so we found your style. You're an orchestra kind of guy? Er, gal?" Skull slumps against the nearby cushions. "Seriously, how come nobody else likes my style? Rock's way better than lame cello music."

She laughs, sliding one of the ear pads off again. "Say, who's Luce?"

He looks at her. Looks away. Then his gaze darts back to her, wide-eyed and panicked. "Hm?"

"That person you mentioned. She likes this kind of music, you said?"

"What? Luce? Wh-What?" Skull tries to smile. It turns out kind of deranged. "No, who? Who's Luce? I never said anything about Luce. I-I have no idea what you're talking about. No idea!"

Hmm.

Jai stares at him.

He puts his head in his hands. "Sorry. I really shouldn't be talking about her. Shouldn't have mentioned her in the first place."

Oh, well. "That's fine," she assures him. The solo violin in her left ear was absolutely stunning. The notes, and the scales—it was perfect, really. Who knew people could compose these kinds of masterpieces?

Jai's attention turns back to Skull, who continues to eye her carefully. It's the kind of look she's familiar with. The goading one, that encourages you to ask questions.

Just because you shouldn't be talking about someone doesn't mean you don't _want_ to talk about them.

"Why shouldn't you be talking about Luce?" she decides to ask.

He bites the skin of his lip. "W-Well, the others would kill me."

"Is it that important?"

"No, not really. It's just kind of…taboo, I guess? I mean, we just…don't…talk about her. At all." The Cloud cringes at himself. "I feel like Reborn-senpai's gonna jump out at me any moment now."

Jai grins and props her head up on a pillow. "Wanna tell me about Luce?"

Skull gives her a twitching, yet genuine smile. "Luce was, like, kind of an orchestra nut," he admits, his tone all hushed and secretive. As if this is Top Classified Information. "She was really big on Pachebel. And Tchaikovsky. And, uh, I think it was Vivaldi? I'm not really sure. But, uh." He snorts to himself. "She used to drag us to concerts all the time. Reborn-senpai, especially. And Reborn-senpai, you know—he doesn't really have the patience for long orchestra concerts like that. He likes to pretend he does so that he can look high-class, but he's really bad at sitting still when he doesn't have to. It makes him all twitchy."

She chokes on a snicker of her own. "Oh, yeah? Why didn't he just say no, then?"

"'Cause you can't! I mean, it's Luce!" he hisses, waving his arms for emphasis. "She'd get _stars_ in her eyes every time you mentioned a composer she knew. Sometimes she'd buy tickets to a concert for all of us, and none of us could ever refuse, _ever_. Not even Verde. I mean, how could you refuse, right? She'd just be _so_ enthusiastic about it. And after every show she'd be like, 'thanks for putting up with me, I'm so glad I got to spend time with all of you', and things like that. The rest of us couldn't stand up to her at _all."_

Their laughter gets swallowed up the pillows and the rain. "She sounds fun," Jai admits, and watches Skull's gaze drift over to the windowpane. Seeing and not-seeing.

"Wish you could meet her," he mutters, practically sinking into his own pillow. "She's—She's dead now, is what I mean. I guess you already figured that out? But, anyway, she's the one who used to bring us all together." His fingers tangle with the tassels. "You'd, uh—you'd have liked her a lot."

Jai breathes out, long and slow. "She was nice, huh?"

"Yeah." Skull's violet eyes go wide, purposely unblinking. "She was…yeah."

His gaze flickers to meet hers for a fraction of a moment. In that fraction, he looks like young—like the kid the others think of him as. She sees what they see at last. "I'm, uh, kind of glad we're all together again," he says, picking at the white tape on his face. "I'm okay with—with her being gone now, but we all kinda went our own ways after she died. Like we never met each other in the first place. I guess everyone else just wanted to put it all behind them, but I never really wanted us to split. So getting to see everyone together again is, uh—it's actually pretty cool, you know?"

His lips turn down in a grimace. "But don't tell them I said that. Especially Reborn-senpai, that bastard. Knowing him, he'll probably beat me up for being too sentimental or whatever. Nothing new."

Jai laughs, and tries to imagine this Luce in her head. Was she tall? Short? Long-haired, short-haired? Pretty? Probably. The prettiest girls are those who smile the most. When a person's spirit is bright on the inside, it shines on the outside, too. That's a well-known truth.

"Hey, come on," Skull hisses. His cheeks are already dashed with pink. "You're not gonna tell 'em, right?"

Of course not, Jai thinks. But instead of saying so, she waggles her eyebrows at him. Mysteriously. Just to stress him out a little.

"Oi, what's—what's _that_ supposed to mean? Don't tell 'em anything! Seriously! I'd die of embarrassment! Are you messing with me right now? Is that it? Quit _doing_ that!"

* * *

Verde leaves for another full week and comes back with a salt-white glove, heavy as obsidian, and about as easy-fitting as a diamond weight being hammered into her hand. "I have full confidence in this one," he promises.

Jai doesn't like the look in his eyes. Pleased, calm, almost elegant. Makes it all the more savage to her.

She weighs the glove on one hand compared to the four bags of groceries in her other. The cartons of milk might as well be empty, the apples half an ounce each. "Hey, that's great! But do you really want to do this now?" She gestures at the sidewalk around her.

"Follow me," the Lightning says—way, way too happily, it's almost a warning—as he turns down one of the narrower alleyways. Jai winces as the glove squeezes the blood out of her fingers. Still, she follows.

There are plenty of open corners at the edge of the suburbs, shadowed by trees and telephone lines. Verde stops in one of them and lets her put down her bags. "Did you perfect the smoke thing?" she asks.

He waves a hand. "No, that project was a useless endeavor from the start. I've found something much more useful in modifying the wires connected to your wave system. Watch."

A robot dog leaps out of the bushes. This is Verde. She's not surprised.

"At the moment, this robot—and five others like it—are located in various locations around Namimori." The scientist motions to the five screens behind him, set up along the concrete walls by his metal flies and beetles. "All of them are currently powered with the use of my Lightning Flames. However, with a simple transfer—" He pulls out a remote from his pocket and presses a few buttons. "Now they are powered by yours."

Each dog on the screen crumples to the ground, including the one in front of her. Jai rubs her neck. "Are you sure that worked out? I mean, for one, that shouldn't even be possible. You can't just _make_ me put my Flames into those things."

"Actually, I can," Verde says, light and pleasant. "That glove puts me in control of your wave system. I can now determine the output of your Flames."

Did she hear that right?

No. Couldn't have. Must've misheard.

Jai blinks hard. The sun is catching in her eyes. For some reason the glove on her arm is getting denser, more suffocating. "Sorry, what?"

His eyes crinkle with pride. "Allow me to demonstrate."

He puts his thumb on the center knob and turns it up, up, up, up—

Jai's knees slam into the ground.

A person can suffer from multiple types of pain. Everyone knows this. There's physical pain, which most people are familiar with. It has a wide range, from a paper-cut sting to the agony of a limb being forcefully removed from its socket. Emotional pain, which causes breakdowns, stress, sometimes bodily deterioration—closely linked to mental pain, the agony of a person's reality being torn down and apart.

Jai remembers all three, but knows physical pain intimately. When Jack took his hand and burst the organs below her heart—it hurt, naturally, but it was also familiar. More importantly, she knew how to heal it. In the body she can heal almost anything.

But there's a fourth type of pain that doesn't fall under any other category. Her sister felt it as she was dying. Jai felt it, too, when she caught the same illness. The feeling of your own damn _spirit_ being leeched out of the marrow in your bones. Suddenly your True Fire becomes false (it _lies_ to you) and look, now you're dying. Blood pumping and heart beating and mind sharp and still dying. You can look up at the sun each morning and thank it for the warmth on your face, but inside you are cold. Inside you are quiet.

It might feel like all three types of pain acting up at once, but in reality, something _vital_ gets ripped out of you. Sucked up and swallowed. Jai's just never been able to place a name for it.

Feeling it now, for the second time in her life, Jai thinks she might call it freedom.

"And as you can see," Verde continues to explain, but the hollowness of her arm makes it awfully hard to hear. She presses her forehead against her ungloved hand and decides to focus on breathing. It's an important process. Best not forget.

Breathing is calming. Breathing is easy. Into your lungs and outward. So long as she ignores the feeling of her life being poured out of her hands and into the sewers—

In and out. She can't live anyway if she doesn't remember how to breathe. Don't panic. Panicking is, in general, a terrible idea.

Be brave, Jai, she thinks.

"Verde," she rasps. "Turn that thing off."

Now, trying to stand. Hard to do when every part of her body is metaphorically burning to ashes.

The scientist doesn't seem to hear her. Ridiculous. She definitely spoke loud enough, so why wasn't he hearing? Gone deaf, all of a sudden? "If you look at the screens," he continues, "you'll see that while the dogs are operating under my control, it's your Flames that are powering them. Most people think it's quite difficult to accomplish—the separation between will and force—but in reality, as you can see—"

Jai lifts her head and watches a film of Tsuna shrieking, scrambling away from a dog's snapping yellow jaws. Glowing with Flames. Her Flames.

She hauls herself to her feet and her arm _disintegrates_, almost bringing her down again. When she looks down, though, it's still intact. Strange. Certainly doesn't feel like it. "Turn it off, Verde," she says.

He gives her a critical glance-over. "Yes, any problems?"

"Turn it off." Her voice sounds like nothing.

"What kind of pain are you experiencing? Physical, mental, emotional?"

Jai laughs, and laughs again. That's funny. Hysterical, even.

Verde narrows his eyes. Whips out a notebook. "Subject experiences discomfort, no description." He fiddles with his remote. "If I increase the Fiamma Voltage…"

Her back hits the wall with a sickening thud. Barring her teeth, she _pulls_ at the Flames being dragged out of her body, calling them back to her core. The searing pain nearly ends her.

Come back to me, she thinks. It doesn't listen. It tears out of her, scraping her edges dry, gorging her insides, _destroying_ her—and Verde isn't listening. Why isn't he listening? Why would he listen? When does he ever? This is killing her, this—what was it—'separation between will and force', this stone clinging to the back of her hand.

She needs it off. _She needs it off._

"So the discomfort increases," Verde mutters. "But the dogs increase in strength as well. And if I lower it again…"

Jai sinks her nails into the glove. The trickle of her Flames straight out of her core begins to ebb. "Verde," she hisses, "get this thing—off—of me."

He shakes his head. "Not yet. There's still data to gather. Are you observing the screens?"

She doesn't care about the screens. Her Flames aren't her own now. Her will is now his, her life is now his. All Flames are born from the balance of heart and mind. Without a purpose, they cannot ignite. When a will is weak, their power is weak.

Her fingers dig deeper until blood bursts under her nails.

Flames are lit by a person's will because there _should not be_ a separation between will and force.

"Jai? V-Verde?"

Jai lifts her head again and sees Skull balanced on the concrete wall, Reborn only a step behind him. "Jai, what's wrong?" the Sun snaps. "Verde, what are you doing?"

"Simply an experiment." The Lightning shrugs. "Which was a success, as you can see."

"An experiment?" Skull parrots.

A success?

He calls this a success?

(Was the atomic bomb a success?)

The pain increases tenfold as her Flames are wrenched out of her faster than ever, and Jai falls again, nearly blinded. Her gloved fist punches the ground with a boom. Then, a crack—maybe one of her wrist bones breaking. "A _success?"_ she snarls.

Verde's voice, when it finally sounds, seems far-away and fake. "Whatever distress you're feeling—"

She pulls her own mouth open so wide that all her teeth show, row upon row upon aching, bleeding row. They feel sharp enough to draw the red from her gums. "Distress?" One short, shuddering breath. It's too much for her lungs. She can't bear it. "Please listen, Verde. Listen to me. Take the glove off, please."

"I'm afraid we're not yet done with the trial."

"Listen to her, Verde! You're hurting her!"

"This is none of your concern—"

"It became my concern the moment you set your dogs on my student. Give me the remote."

"Yeah, turn it off! Are you crazy?!"

Jai looks at Verde, with his polite, bewildered gaze resting on the other two. He won't, she realizes. He won't turn it off. He won't listen.

Enough of this.

She tears herself away from the dirt, Sun Flames roaring in her other fist, and punches into the wall. The five screens crack. Glass shatters. She rears back to do it again, but the warmth splutters from her knuckles, and when they slam into the wall a second time, the fragmented concrete cracks them like eggs.

Heart pounding, she whips around towards the scientist. His thumb presses the arrow on the dial firmly against 0. She takes a step forward. "_Give_ that to me!"

He stares back, this time with a fair amount of caution. "Calm down first."

Jai finds herself clutching the center of her stomach, as if it somehow helps to keep her Flames inside. She lets out a strangled sound, hybrid and vicious. The warmth might be leaving her, but a different heat takes its place—colder, wilder. Strange and foreign. She lunges.

Verde dodges, predictably, but Skull's foot sweeps out, and Reborn snatches the remote as the Lightning's footing slips. He tosses it to Jai. Jai's fingers scrabble against the dial.

"It only responds to my fingerprints," Verde says, cold and sharp. "Now, as I said, calm down and just—"

She turns to the half-shattered wall.

"No, _don't_ break it!" He lifts his hands. His voice, for once, is harsh, rugged as mountains. "It's rigged to explode the glove if it breaks. If you smash it without going through the proper procedures, you'll die, you understand? If you—"

Jai's gaze darts to him. Then, to the glove on her right hand, black as night.

The pain sings her dirge.

She smashes the remote into the wall.

Verde's voice seems to die in his throat. The vacuum of her Flames disappears. She smiles and lets the shards of the remote slip from her fingers into a hundred tiny pieces, tinkling merrily through the clarity within her head.

["SELF-DESTRUCTION SEQUENCE" ACTIVATED,] the glove warbles.

Jai has two seconds to act. She molds fire around her right arm—tendons, joints, tissues, wrist, elbow, thumb. They relax even as her Flames tighten them, coiling around each compact part like wires. At least there's a chance her fingers might stay intact, even if the rest of her body doesn't.

And now there's no time left for anything else, save to resolve herself not to lose consciousness.

It—

_Explodes_—

And engulfs her.

The fabric of the glove wrings her skin tight, tighter than the throat of a snake, before melting into a substance loose and cool, oozing like a salve over her arm (which is now feathery-light, lighter than it ever was). She shuts her eyes and hears a rush of air. A ringing. A bit of crackling. The scent of gritty smoke washes over her. Her right side feels tender, the skin on her cheek fresh as spring. Ice rattles and burns in her ribs.

Her head spins. Or maybe that's just her staggering. She leans against the wall with her unscathed arm and takes three deep breaths to check for lung damage.

"Holy fuck," Skull says, mainly through her left ear. Her right one doesn't seem to be working so well.

Actually, none of her right seems to be working that well. Except maybe her leg, her hip, and she can feel all her right toes—

A pounding starts in the back of her skull. Jai has just enough Flames to fix all this damage. At least there's no need to regrow any limbs. She gets to work.

Healing her body is an old game, like visiting a past friend. By the time she's done, a sluggish cloud has settled over her head. Half the blood pumping through her heart is newly grown. Same with the meat around the ribs. The flesh in her shoulder, first-born. And yet her body doesn't feel new at all—just older, exhausted, reserves of Flames run dry. Her finger bones still feel naked to the air.

Jai looks over at Verde with her markless right eye. The Lightning looks back blankly.

With a sigh, she slides down against the wall until her tailbone hits the bottom. "Oh, Verde," she says. "What were you thinking?"

She can see the exact moment when Verde's brain doubles back, his eyes light up, and that defensive bite enters his voice. "The experiment was a success," he says in a clipped tongue. "I engineered a weapon that can remotely take control of any person's Flames. It's an innovation in wave technology."

Deep breaths. Long and slow. Jai lolls her head back for the concrete to catch.

"_All dreams become reality_," she quotes, in jagged-cut Italian, "_for what lies in your imagination may also lie in others, and when spread far, it will stand true. Therefore a dream of joy is a world of joy; a dream of hatred is a world of hatred. Before you dream, you must always ask: in what world would I like to live?"_

The gears in Verde's brain whirr, straining to decipher whatever value in her words. Value which can be sold, appropriated, used for darker gains.

"I'd die before wearing that glove again. Never thought I'd think something like that—but hey, it's what you've done. You've completely commodified the living."

Verde's face twists—the most expressive she's ever seen him. "Of course you'd rather die. Anyone would. That's the whole_ point _of this—don't you understand? I'm revolutionizing this entire business. I make the—the _gods_ that rake in the wealth of my customers. Do you think I do any of this for _gratitude?"_

"Oh, Verde," she says again. Her skin feels airy and haunted. "Get out."

Out of the town, out of his head, out of her sight—whichever it is, she isn't sure. Any one of them is fine.

Verde slips his hands into his lab coat. "Our deal—"

What deal? There was a deal? No, there can't have been. Nothing could have ever been worth this. What had she been thinking? "Get out."

Winter thunders in her chest. There's nothing quite like the shame of recognizing the crime that you've had a part in creating.

Silently, and without argument, Verde shuts his laptop and leaves, striding around the corner. After a heartbeat, Reborn follows him, fedora tilted low. No doubt he wants stall the scientist and share a word or two. She can't quite catch sight of either of their faces.

"That was insane," Skull says to break the silence. His eyes are still blown wide.

The glove may be gone now, but what happens next? Does it get replicated? Sold? If she'd killed Verde to stop what he stands for, rather than letting him leave, what else would she have destroyed?

Jai leans back against the wall and thinks about bombs and guns, and swords and knives, and people who will change the world, and people who will break it. Skull methodically takes apart the husk of the robot dog, setting each scrap of metal on fire. "Feel like getting up?" he asks after a while.

She shakes her head.

So he sits down next to her, and together they watch a cremation.

* * *

Fon's hand touches her shoulder. "Jai?"

She rolls over. " 'M awake."

"The movie's over."

The blankets tumble down her shoulders as she sits up. The credits are already rolling across the TV. Takeshi, Tsuna, and Gokudera are sprawled out across the floor, twisted up in the sheets. Lambo and I-Pin dozing in the armchair, Fuuta just below them. Even Tsuna's mom is passed out along the couch, Reborn lying prostate with a sleep bubble near her head.

The lights upstairs are on. Probably Bianchi bustling about before them all, getting ready for bed. "So how'd it end?" Jai whispers.

"Happily." Fon's smile is only just visible in the backlight of the screen. "It's almost one. I'll walk Gokudera-kun home."

"Yeah, I'll wake up Takeshi." She rises to her feet, cracking a few joints. Pokes aforementioned kid in the cheek with her foot. "Hey, Taketake. Wake up, time for school."

"Mmph." He squints at her and makes drowsy sounds. "Mm? Wh..."

She hides a snicker into her sweater. "The movie's over, and it's late. You gotta keep quiet so you don't wake anyone."

"Oh…going home, then?"

"Mm-hm."

"Okay." He struggles to his elbows and kicks the blankets off, careful not to nudge Tsuna in the process. Behind him, Gokudera yawns, muttering something to Fon while groping aimlessly for his jacket.

Jai turns around to search for her own, only to find it in Fuuta's hands. Clinging to it tight, in the fierce war of a dream. No choice—she bends down to shake him. "C'mon, Fuuta. You gotta gimme my coat."

"Hm?" He locks onto her, wide-awake in the blink of an eye. "You're leaving?"

"Yeah. Sorry. I would've let you sleep, but it's raining pretty hard."

"Oh, it's fine." Fuuta hands her the raincoat. Then he motions for her ear, leans forward to reach it, and breathes, "I got a dream from the Ranking Planet."

She laughs with only her breath. "I thought all your dreams come from the Ranking Planet."

He shrugs and ignores her comment. Jai gets the feeling that he doesn't really care. To him, all his dreams are important. "We were on a road," he whispers, "and I was in one car, with Tsuna-nii and Reborn-san and Bianchi-san, and we were going on a road trip through a desert." He reaches to the side. Grabs two pistachios from an unfinished bowl. "See, imagine one of these was us."

Obediently, Jai imagines a car. A pistachio car. She grins at him. "And?"

"So we were driving," Fuuta continues, dragging the pistachio through the air, "and then I saw another car, coming on the other side of the road." He shows her the second pistachio. "It was going super fast, but I looked out the window and I saw you in the passenger seat, talking to someone in the driver's seat. And then _zoom_—" He takes the pistachio flying into the air. "You sped off in the opposite direction really quickly—"

"Jai, I'm ready," Takeshi calls.

She nods to him and gives Fuuta a hug. "Sorry, gotta go," she murmurs. "But quick—tell me where I was heading?"

He hands her one of the pistachios. "I dunno. But Tsuna-nii and us came from the beach, so maybe that's where you were going?" His own green pistachio car disappears into his mouth. "G'night, Jai. Don' let the bed bugs bite."

"Night, Fuuta," Jai whispers.

She pulls her raincoat on and follows the two boys out the door. Fon takes refuge beneath her hood. The rain drums against the streets, gurgles down the gutters, streaks down the tip of her nose and the small indent of her lips.

With the pistachio on her tongue, the rain tastes faintly like salt. She pretends it comes from the sea.

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes:** listen here, kids. the arcobaleno? yeah, there's a special place in my heart for each and every one of those punks. but let's be real here, alright, in what world would verde and jai get along hahaha come on now

next chapter is the legit start of the varia arc! please don't expect anything grand though, i'm just trying to build everything up to the excitement of the future arc and beyond. this story's getting done no matter how long it takes.

thanks for reading!


	12. Crimson

**Warnings:** GEN, AU, OC-centric

**Author's Notes:** by the way, if you notice the summary of this story changing sometimes, just know that i'm still looking for the ONE PERFECT SUMMARY and that if it changes again (which it probably will), it's because i'm a dweeb who can't come up with anything fresh.

anyway, this chapter was a real struggle to complete. sorry about that! i've spent far too much time on it already, so let me just throw this out here so i can get back to my schoolwork. it's been months of delay, but here we are at the varia arc!

* * *

12\. CRIMSON

* * *

_"Tell it to me, Jai?"_

_Jai swings around towards her friend. She stands in a round-ringed, opulent room. The sun swirls through the fine mist, blowing knolls around the windows. "I've been practicing over and over, you snake. I won't again today."_

_"But I'll beg," Faux warns. He steps forward into the center of the chamber, hands folded behind his back. From where she stands, he looks short and small, his face a white heart in the empty room. "Go on," he pleads, with a grin. "Again! Edfarste! Pretend I am your audience."_

_She relents with a sigh. Her back settles into strong, indomitable lines. She looks on, feet firmly planted. Meets the audience's eye. Her hands spread, and she speaks:_

_"We stand sentinel to the undying age, hence the centuries are counted past us. The Maedysy leave not a void but a propagating cold. It is felt here, in I, the Phantoms, the servicepeople. It is felt in the black space, which We and I are left to fill—"_

_"'I and We'," Faux interrupts. "It should be I before We, remember? The saying is 'I and We leave Life to Leaf', and so on and so on."_

_With a sarcastic dip to her eyes, Jai leans her weight against the podium. "I know how the quote goes. But it'll be 'We and I' when I say it."_

_"Why? That's a famous quote. I wouldn't mess with the phrasing."_

_Her laughter spins in the air like a pin. "Yes, yes, _you_ wouldn't. But isn't this my speech? It was, last I checked!"_

_He cocks his head. "I'm only saying it won't sound much better that way. Unless you mean the 'We' more than the 'I', which is why you'd place it in that order…in which case that is a deeper statement. Ah, well…" The corners of his eyes twist and wrinkle. "Anyway, continue! It's very good so far."_

_Jai can never stand his criticism. She makes a clawing motion in his direction. He beams back, the very portrait of innocence. His smile, she notes, has gotten very blinding, with those white teeth of his. "You will hear the rest when it's presented," she decides aloud, "assuming you go to Court tomorrow, that is?"_

_"Yes, I'll go with Dineva. We'll see your speech."_

_"Then it will be a surprise for the both of you." She hops down from the podium and descends the long trail of stairs, the white steps arching downward like the fingers of a spine. "I'll introduce you to Hatz, of course. And you have met Pir and Oye?"_

_His grin widens. "Not Oye, yet. Though I have met Pir. She is likeable."_

_They study one another in the middle of the courtroom. Jai breathes in, surrounded by the seats of world-changers and world-racers. They say that this is the heartland, the bloodland; this is the place where history is made, where the future of their world ripples outward. "How we've changed from childhood," Faux murmurs. "You, Jai of our humble hometown, now a serviceperson of the Court—"_

_"You changed too." For emphasis, she taps a finger beneath her eye._

_"Oh." He laughs, reaching up to brush beneath his new pair of claret eyes. His old silver ones are still there, but only in glimpses, when he blinks in the light—she is tempted to call him 'quicksilver' because of it. "Yes, this is change," he agrees, "but it is only a minor thing."_

_Jai folds her arms. "That is minor to you? You gave Dineva a fright when she saw you."_

_"It's only the eyes that have changed! And just the color of it."_

_"She thought you were possessed! She _punched_ you! In the _face!"

_"Which _hurt_." His voice is positively plaintive. "That was silly of her. Red eyes are not evil, she ought to know."_

_"They are magic's eyes. Some will see it as a corruption." Still, she softens her voice as she says it. She doesn't mean to admonish him._

_He huffs, a bit miffed. "Well, those few are missing out on all the fun."_

_"Really? Heh. I will take your word for it."_

_Faux snickers at her. He is changed. His laughter is silent now, his eyes hooded then brightened with sly, potent passion. The tattoo-ink on his arms is beautiful. Well-suited. And the way he walks, even—like a real luminary. Someone grand. "You truly have changed," he comments. "Even in character."_

_Jai closes her hands on themselves. Faux and Dineva have become people worthy of respect. Compared to them, she is lustreless, and full of penitence. It swells inside her—a tumid pain. She holds a seat of power at the heights of the government that only children have dared to dream of, and yet she does not remember how she climbed here, or why—what pride she should've felt, and who for. "Is that good?" she asks. "I do not know what person I've become, lately. Dineva said she felt she was meeting me all over again."_

_"Well, she jests," Faux replies. His face seems more open in his surprise. "You are still mostly the same. Even if not, I wouldn't mind re-meeting people. I can promise you that."_

_"Truly?"_

_"True."_

_Jai wonders if he remembers all his oaths, if he is dauntless, if—given the chance—he would ask her again for an adventure through the deserts and the mountains. She wouldn't mind seeing more of the world. In fact, she'd like nothing more than that, now. This place is so suffocating. "Well, if it makes you feel any better, I swear never to lift a hand against your person."_

_Faux laughs at that. "Thank you." The fog glows on the dusty embers around his hair. "And I swear never to wish you weren't here, alive and whole, and my friend, from now until dawn. Or until you take Dineva's side against me, I suppose."_

_A glimmer of a laugh, a bough from her mouth. "That—That would have been very touching, without the end of it."_

_His grin tilts the axis of her world. "Just wait. One day I will write a book of touching quotes. That will satisfy you."_

_"Me? You think I'd quote _you_? I ought to _hit_ you. Suppose it's not too soon for me to take back my oath?"_

_"What? No! You can't do that, you bully."_

_"I can regret it, though. I can regret all life-long…"_

_"You wound me! This is harassment!"_

_The courtroom is left behind them._

* * *

When Jai was younger and much, much shorter (as in, she could've ridden dogs, but not any modern-day roller coasters), one of her caretakers, Signor Hastian, took her aside in the dry, billowing fields, and told her about her mother and father. This was how Jai learned that most children weren't usually raised like she was—that is to say, _most_ kids didn't grow up in a household of twenty other children of different skins, shapes, and sounds, all parented by ten different grown-ups of ten different varieties. An orphanage, basically, though they didn't call it that back then.

Jai's blood-parents died in battle. "We do not know their names," said Hastian, "only that they died in a village that was razed to the ground, and that their love for you had been ethereal, beyond comparison, deeper and mightier than the dreams of the earth."

Names, in her old life, held special meanings. Pir's name meant simply _daughter_. Faux was _gratitude_. Aiva meant _light of mind_, Dineva was _born of rivers_, and Hatz was a noble one, _shield._

Jai's name means _warrior_.

Besides Aiva, they were all born in a tender time, just after an era of midnight—one of history's dark, violent, experimental hours. So the name 'Jai' became a representation, a culmination. A hope and warning both. Jai was named this because her parents knew that it's a child who enters life but a warrior who will leave it. Her name is life's result. Her name is a breathtaking thing.

In blunter words, her parents named her Jai because they wanted her to survive through tough times.

Which has turned out to be a _surprisingly high expectation_.

It starts with the boom. Then, the smoke. The pillar that rises from the horizon line is thick, bluish-brown, fluffed up like ashy cotton.

Another explosion goes off. Jai steadies herself against the seats as the train rattles on its rails. Around her, the Sunday commuters begin to panic.

She hops off at the next station and snags some high-schooler by the back of his shirt. He brings her up to speed. "There was this lady with a sword," he sputters, "attacking that one group of weird middle schoolers, uh, you know which kids I'm talking about. You know how they're always making chaos around here? Well, this time, they got hurt real bad, and, uh—heck, I'm pretty sure that woman cut one of them in _half_," and whoa, wow, now Jai has a pretty good reason to feel anxious about this whole thing.

Namimori's antics are dangerous in theory, but they've actually been pretty harmless so far. It's kind of like being surrounded by grenades, which Reborn has metaphorically placed all around town, but only in high-up places that can't be reached. The civilians get nervous around those areas, but after a while, they start developing a sort of demented love-hate relationship with the threat of death looming over their heads.

Yeah, people get a lot of thrill out of this town. Hence why the older folks move out, the younger folks move in, the middle-aged folks regret their life decisions…so it goes.

But here's the thing about those grenades: the pins aren't supposed to be pulled. Despite Gokudera's dynamite, Hibari's tyranny, and the Italian mafia's _very noticeable_ presence, Namimori still stays safe. The civilians always stay safe. Reborn has always made sure of that. Nobody is supposed to get truly, serious hurt.

For instance, no massive explosions shouldn't be going off in the city's most populated square.

Hence why this is a very unrealistic situation.

Outside the station, the streets are a stream of people fleeing. The noise is near deafening. Someone's car is flipped over across the street, chalky white smoke bubbling from the wheels.

In the closest ally, Jai steps into a blindingly bright patch of pavement and teleports. A squeeze. Exhilarating warmth. Her vision goes white as she snaps forward, from flesh to light, light to flesh.

She steps with a crunch upon the rubble.

There's a body slumped just around the corner of the road. Reddish hair. Tight shoulders, curled inward. Reborn stands nearby, his mouth forming words lost in the haze.

Jai _flies._

She skids to a halt in front of Gokudera, her Flames a harsh glow around her hands. The Storm blinks up at her. "Jai?" he asks, with a crimson cascade of blood and grit down the front of his shirt, sticking the fabric to the gaping gash along his torso that Reborn is stitching back together. The Storm's voice shakes.

Why does this look like a sword wound?

She kneels down. "Reborn, I got this."

Reborn glances at her, down at his hands, and back at her again. "No, leave him to me. Go to Tsuna and Yamamoto." The corner of his mouth is creased down. "You can heal faster than I can. They're going to need that."

Yep, the day is shot.

Since Reborn's orders are generally sound, Jai searches for the nearest signs of war. The wreckage of the nearby arcade looks like the most dangerous bet. She teleports again, streaking through the air, skimming across the ruin.

She reappears suspended in the air, caught in that frozen moment before gravity takes hold. From up here, she's got a convenient view of the punctured rooftop. She sees Tsuna crouched on the ground, one leg warped to a visibly uncomfortable degree, hovering above a boy his age. She sees Rain Flames spiraling from the eye of that unfamiliar boy's forehead.

And nearby, she sees Takeshi leaning his full weight against a coin-op, a sword shooting forward to pin him at the throat.

No.

Absolutely _not._

Jai tears the nearest arcade machine out of its sockets on her way down, lunges forward, and _heaves_, flinging the hulking mass of it into the air with all the strength of the fire searing her muscles black.

The sound it makes as it screams through the air is absolutely nightmarish. It plummets down, a blinding beacon in the sunlight. Mid-way through her hawk-like swoop, the woman—wait, no, back up, that's a _man_, isn't it?—glances up at the massive shape plunging towards him.

Then he plants his foot down, whirls around, and takes three fluid steps to the side.

The cabinet _slams_ into the ground where he once stood, disintegrating from the force. Bits of plastic and wiring go flying. None of it touches him.

He just dodged that thing like it was nothing.

It's so ridiculous that Jai actually laughs. "What!"

"Jai!" Takeshi shouts, whipping around towards her. His entire body is charred. Beaten and bleeding.

Jai stops laughing.

In front of them, the man scowls. Clad in all black, save for the silver adornments. Pale hair bleached beyond white by the sun, so long it draws a curtain over his back. His blade is wrapped flat against his left hand.

No, wait, his blade _is_ his left hand. Hoooly moly.

"_Voi_," he growls, "who the hell are you? Another Vongola?" He doesn't even pause for her response. He seems upset. That's possibly an understatement. "Fucking garbage, you lot, throwing yourselves in the way when you're all weaker than _shit_."

His Rain Flames aren't at all like Takeshi's, or Colonnello's, or Lal Mirch's. Or even Oye's, when he was alive. They're not quite as pure, for one. They don't mimic water. Instead, they dance in vigor, forming zealous, artful shapes. There is a passion in them lacking of compassion, an angular complex of sensations.

She picks up a part of a fallen streetlight and swings it over her shoulder. "I'm not part of the Vongola, actually. You wanna get away from those kids over there?"

The man grins. The points of his teeth make a harrowing edge. "And who's gonna stop me? You, with that thing?" His laughter sounds like a slice of the wind. It sends chills down her spine. Must be spooky season. "You know, I was thinking about letting all of you fuck around for a little while longer, but it turns out I'm in a pretty shitty mood today. _Muori!"_

"Jai, run!" Takeshi shouts, but the man isn't headed for either of them. Instead, his sword-arm slashes down on Tsuna and the other boy at an invisible, indescribable pace.

But nothing is faster than the speed of light. She's actually looked it up in the books once. 186,000 miles per second, it said. That's 299,792,458 metres, it said. Did you know, it said, that it takes 1.3 seconds for light to travel the distance from the earth to the moon?

Still, that's all just technical jargon. Here's her realistic definition, which she tells people to put things into perspective:

A person could die because of many things, but never because she wasn't there.

Jai catches his sword with her pole. The edge of his blade cuts three-fourths of the way through the steel bar, clean as a knife to a loaf. She doesn't know whether to be horrified or…horrified. Yeah, actually, it's just horror all around.

The man pushes harder. The steel beam cracks and bends. "Back!" she shouts. "Get back!"

Behind her, Tsuna scrambles to obey, half-dragged by the boy with the paper-white face and the wound seeping the life of out of his side. Tsuna is crying. Takeshi is beside them in the blink of an eye, tucking the Sky's waist into his arms.

Honestly, these kids just came out to have some real fun. They deserve better days than this.

In a whirl, she spins the lamppost around. The man's sword almost, _almost_, gets tugged out of his grasp. He slides it out in the nick of time, and strikes.

She barely even sees him move. Certainly, Jack was stronger and faster, but this guy is powerful, too—not overwhelmingly, but he's skilled. And he has teeth, the bite of a blade. It's _incredible_. Jai can see in the waltz of the light that this is a real swordsman, as Tsuyoshi is. His silver hair spins silk around the corners of her gaze.

But there's another feeling here, too. Not quite like the intimacy of bloodlust and adrenaline. Jai's Flames reach out, and grasp it.

A coat of Rain Flames glimmers around him. The texture of a shell. Layered and muted. Reducing damage.

It's also expertly made. Flawless.

Jai barely catches his next blow. The beam screams in her hands. This is a pretty bad spot for her. "Whoa, whoa, whoa, where'd you learn that?"

The swordsman gives her a snarling smile. He seems kind of cheerful now, which is weird. "The hell're you talkin' about?"

"You know." She looks him up and down. "What you're doing right now. Covering up your skin." Heck, with a barrier like that to protect him, he can probably brush off bullets. No wonder the kids didn't stand a chance.

Rather than responding, he swings down, flaying her beam to shreds. Jai drops the scraps of metal and ducks beneath his next spin, mind racing above the grey.

The barrier around him won't be a problem. She can tear it apart, easy. But she still stands no chance against this man, so long as he holds his sword.

Unfortunately for her, it's going to be a tad difficult to, you know.

_Disarm_ him.

Man, Reborn would've loved that one.

As the whetted edge of his sword flashes out, Jai twists around and steps forward, ignoring the way it scrapes a strip off her arm. The Rain takes a step back in turn, pulling back for a stab that she knows she can't dodge. He meets her gaze. His lips peel back, his nose wrinkles. Jai swears she's never seen nothing like it before, that entanglement of fury and joy.

The blade shoots out, straight for her face. In the same moment, Jai takes the risk. Makes a decision.

She whips her head back—it draws blood across her cheek, a faint streak of it—and brings her forearm up behind her ear. Braces herself. Her other hand grips tight on her shoulder.

Like lightning, his sword rips flesh.

As the edge slides roughly between the two bones in her forearm, piercing right through the nerve, Jai lets herself grin. The swordsman's eyes go wide.

Whew. Perfect.

She twists her forearm down before he can react, taking his sword with her. The blade catches fiercely in the gap of her bones. He tries to pull back, but she's already moved forward, closing the precious distance between them.

Her arm is searing, the marrow of her bones trembling in protest. Still, the torture is worth it.

With her other arm, Jai elbows him across the face.

He coughs. Reels back. His barrier shatters beneath her own pinpoint of Sun Flames. His hair flies around them in a veil.

She hits him again. Her punch lands on his ribs, right side of his midsection. It cracks bone and mutilates the muscle. To his heart, it would feel more like a seismic wave. She can hear the man's aching wheeze. The briefest shudder of confusion.

But instead of collapsing, his other arm flickers into motion. Jai catches a glimpse of the retribution in his eyes. Not good. She fists his jacket in both hands, one on his collar, the other at the hem. He reaches around her shoulders for the nape of her neck.

Together, they crumple.

Jai is strong enough to toss boulders and break the varnish of bones. She manages a second good shot, a fist buried into his lungs that rips a gasp from his lips. It doesn't quite finish him, though. The man's got a _great_ constitution. She tries for another.

Yet even without a sword, with just a bladed forearm digging awkwardly into the rubble, useless to use in their proximity—it looks like the swordsman is faster all the same.

Her skull slams into the ground under the heel of his Flame-filled hand. She hears a deafening crack, and then the world whites out in a roar of sea-foam. A shard of glass serrates one of her palms. Her vision grows muddled, like the reflection of a wet day.

Wait, no. Shoot, this can't happen. She can't afford this to happen.

Jai lashes out. With a sick, solid thud, her elbow catches beneath his ribs, thrusting upward. She can hear him choke, but the hand on her head doesn't move. If anything, it seems to be filling with more Rain Flames than before.

Jai doesn't realize she's laughing until the man looks down at her with wide, wild eyes. "What the _fuck_," he says. The tremble in his voice is more due to rage and ecstasy than anything remotely close to fear.

"That's…good technique," Jai gasps out through the howling in her head. She can barely even see. The man's face is all a blur, and the sky—it's bright, so bright—"You're _very_ good. Who…Who taught you?"

"What's it to you, huh?" he snarls. His hand presses even harder.

So, with his sword-arm still trapped beneath all her weight, Jai sets herself on fire.

The air trembles above her skin. Her Flames are a coat of molten gold, her tongue a lick of lava, powdered—her teeth feel like hot coals, sparks bursting at her gums. The tone of her skin is the upturned earth, burning light black on the magma. Jai burns and burns with the heat of a white sun, and thinks she can hear the Rain screaming above the crackling of the fire. His pale Flames swirl around him in a baying wind, desperate to salvage skin.

That's not working so great for him. But, well, a guy can try.

Even as he roasts above her, his hand doesn't move from her head. Her crackling, pounding head. If he keeps this up, she might just pass out. Luckily, that won't be a problem, since the heat from her body should have him rolling away right about now. She waits for it.

Three seconds pass.

Now, to a guy lying on top of what must feel to him like the smoldering coals of hellfire, three seconds is actually an excruciatingly-long period of time.

And yet, he refuses to give in.

Jai doesn't consider herself particularly merciful in battle. But she's burning hotter than a furnace right now, and unlike this idiot on top of her, she doesn't believe that anyone really deserves a live cremation.

With a snap, Jai reigns her Flames back in, and pushes the man off with her foot. He topples off. From the stump of his arm, liquid metal gushes out where his sword once was. It ripples through the air like a silent whip, hissing as it strikes ground.

She sits up. "Dude," she says.

The smell of roasting meat curdles on her tongue. The man lets out a heaving sound. It's near-painful to watch.

To be honest, she doesn't feel much better than him. Her head feels like fifteen people are drilling into it.

"Seriously, dude," she continues as she watches him groan, "there's a difference between knowing your limits and ignoring your limits. Were you just going to…" She presses a hand to her temple as her vision blurs. "To let me...burn you up, or something? I mean, I know we're trying to kill each other, but you still—you still gotta take care of yourself…"

Shoot. Where was she going with this?

The man lets out a tortured sound. "My sword," he says, "you melted—_melted?_—What the fuck?" He sounds genuinely confused. The rest of his words are lost in a jumble of hot air.

Jai gives up talking, too. She plants her hands against the ground. The headache refuses to burn out, no matter how much fire she presses against the pulse. Stars, if only she had Lanka. Or more Flames. If she just had more Flames...

It's fine. She'll be fine. Maybe she can just close her eyes for a while…

But the kids still need healing. She has to pull something together, for the kids.

"I'll…kill you. I'll _kill you_." In the corner of her eye, the swordsman shifts. Yeah, good luck, chump. He's no threat to anyone now. Not with the state of those burns.

"Oh, my. What happened to _you?"_

Jai freezes. So does the swordsman.

That voice is new.

A stranger's boots crunch the ground a little ways to her left. He seems short, a bit young. Black clothes, blond hair. Jai tries to focus on him, but everything is so heavy. Her _head_—

The swordsman on the ground lets out a wheeze, although it sounds suspiciously like some sort of phrase. Like, 'you little shit', or something. But maybe Jai's just hearing things.

"Oi, oi, oi, that's not a nice thing to say to your prince. Or…is it your knight in shining armor, in this case?" The little giggle that follows rakes a wet comb on Jai's spine. "Hey, lady. Don't tell me _you're_ the one who did this to our esteemed general?"

It takes a moment for her to realize that he's talking to her. It takes another to come up with an answer. "Yeah?" she tries.

"A-ha," says the stranger. "Too bad for you, huh?" There's a crook in his smile, a glint in his hand.

"Jai!" Takeshi calls from a faraway place. "Jai, watch out!"

Jai blinks away the dust in her eyes.

_"Jai!"_

Now there's a knife, flying right for her face.

She's pretty sure that wasn't there before—

* * *

"Is she dead? Is she dead?"

"No. No, you saved her."

"And just where do you think you're going, Belphegor?"

* * *

Scents. Chestnuts and bike-leather and something strange, like snow. "Whoa, whoa. Easy, Jai." The words clamp around her arm. Someone lights a cigarette, lets the smoke curl around dark spaces. "It doesn't look like it's workin', Doc." A woman laughs: a fond, pretty sound, shaped like a little squall.

When his wife died, one drowning man carved out a kissed, ferocious bone, and every day laid beneath it as the earth. "Angels in Rome!" a mother whispers. "Where am I going? Is it Heaven? You've been there, of course." Oh, no, not Jai. She will board another ship, though perhaps they will converge…

"Throw now!" Aiva shouts. She does. The ocean lifts to meet the scallop. "Mine's farthest," Faux says, "mine went right past that swirl of foam, a bit farther than the last wave. What do you mean, that's no landmark? The sea remembers it." He flips up a stone.

("Kill me, please," breathes Myron's little boy. Blood slows. The heart flips. Faux turns, a toxin in his eyes, a red wine in the throat, says that _if I kill them all, it will save us_. He says _believe in me, trust in me, but if you disagree with me_, but Jai will tell him a better idea, she will tell him to _go kill yourself_—)

* * *

You are the hearth,

The hellfire.

* * *

"Jai? It's Tsuyoshi. Let the drugs do their work. Close your eyes, go to sleep. You'll be well again soon."

Tonight is the last time you will _ever see the moon_—

* * *

She wakes up in an old, brown room.

The place is homely, warm and dark. In the window, a small bare angle between the blinds shows the sky still silky with sleep. There's a dried-up towel on her head, and the owl clock on the wall is giving her the weirdest sense of déjà vu.

Other than that, Jai is alone.

She sits up. The ancestor of all headaches punches her skull in.

She lies back down again. "Wow," she breathes, rubbing circles around her temples. It doesn't help much.

Her brain is so battered, it takes a moment to remember even what country she's in. She can't remember how she got here, in Tsuyoshi's guest room. She can't remember the year, or the meaning of her name. It feels a lot like someone slammed her scalp into the ground, trying to crack it open or somethi—

Oh, wait. That's right.

Jai glances at the owl clock. It tells her the time, 7:36 AM. But it doesn't tell her the day, or how and why she's still alive. Next to it, though, is a folded notecard. Inside that folded notecard is a short, crimson rose.

She picks them up. In pandering strokes, the notecard reads: _It's always a pleasure to treat an angel. (No need for gratitude. Call me if you feel anything that bothers you…or just call, if you like.)_

She laughs into her sleeve. Oh, Shamal. What a wonderful guy.

Rose in hand, she eases herself to her feet.

The hall is quiet. The door to Takeshi's room is open. He isn't inside. Same goes for Tsuyoshi's.

The stairs creak as she pitters down to check out the restaurant. Shadows melt into soft bars through the blinds. But there's nobody down here, either.

The sushi bar is cleared off, wiped to a lustrous sheen. Jai grabs a sip of water that soothes a bit of her headache. She swipes a banana from the fruit basket. Drops the rose into a vase. Then, she glances at the digital clock next to the faucet.

7:38 AM, TUESDAY, 7°C, it blinks, in fat, blocky shapes.

Tuesday. Last she remembers, it was Sunday.

This is why Jai hates to sleep. She can never wake up on time, can she?

Her arm seems to have healed nicely. The punctured nerve has been smoothed out and filled. Still, there's a weird chemical lingering in her bloodstream, but that's just Shamal's signature. She hopes he healed the kids, too. She hopes he made it to them in time. He would've. Must've.

Jai grabs the spare set of keys and heads out the front door. The hanging lanterns sway sweetly in the breeze. In the distance, she can hear the groan of an old truck ready to retire, and the cackling of a group of high school kids loping along at a rebellious pace. They're going to be late for school. They're _already_ late for school.

A white slip of laminated paper catches her eye. Taped haphazardly next to Takesushi's door, it reads: _Due to recent circumstances, Takesushi will be closed from Monday through Friday, October 14-18. We apologize for the inconvenience._

Jai frowns. "You've gotta be flipping my spinach," she tells the door.

A message like this doesn't bode well at all. Her memory offers her images: Tsuna bruised, Takeshi bloodied, the unnamed Rain spilling his life over the diced slabs of concrete. Gokudera was in critical condition, slit open at the stomach.

And here she was starting to think that things could stay easy.

Breathing deep, Jai sets off for Tsuna's house. It's closer than the hospital, at any rate. In the early dark, the streets are stripped of their colors. Only a muted blue is left, along with the scent of summer dispossessed. Pastel hepaticas bow their heads along the sidewalks.

She steps up to Tsuna's front door just as the first sun scatters over the horizon. Then she knocks at the door, and waits.

It swings open to reveal a blond man, a Sky, with thick, strong arms, and a bit of dark stubble on his chin.

Whoops. Wrong house.

For a moment, Jai seriously considers doubling back down the street. Then it occurs to her that she'd have to be completely out of her own mind to mistake Tsuna's house for another. She takes another look.

His face is the same one in the Sawada family pictures.

Her first instinct is to laugh. "Hey, no way! Tsuna's dad, right?"

Tsuna's dad lets out a hearty chuckle. His eyes, on the other hand, are stern. That's expected though. Typical mafia treatment. "Yes, that would be me. I see you know my son, er…"

"Jai," she offers, along with her hand. He shakes it. His palms are leathery, flecked with little white scars.

"You already knew her name, Iemitsu," Colonnello's voice calls from somewhere behind him. "We _told_ you about her, so quit wasting time. Get the hell outta the doorway, would you?"

Sawada frowns over his shoulder without any real ire. "Now, hold on, Colonnello. Who says you can order me around in my own household?"

"Oh, yeah? It ain't _your_ household if _Fon's_ the one who has to threaten you out of bringing beer home to the little kids! Because _you_, you are one hell of a lazy, worthless, no-good, irresponsible—"

"It was A RHETORICAL QUESTION," Sawada Sr. calls back. Loudly.

"Excuse me, Sawada-san." Dino squeezes into the doorframe next to Sawada and smiles at Jai. He smells like chestnuts and metal. His hair is giant mop, and there's a bandage wrapped around his head, baring his right ear. "Jai! This is a nice surprise. Oh, how are you feeling?"

"Pretty good!" Jai bounces in place a little. "Pretty fine! Pretty punchy! How 'bout you?"

"Better, now that you're here. Your head's fine?"

Well, it's getting there. "Yeah, thanks!"

"Good. Sorry we kind of just, er—" Dino glances at Colonnello as the Rain hauls himself onto his shoulder. "We kind of left you by yourself for a while, see," he continues, "but there's a perfectly good explanation. Everyone's been busy, is all."

She waves it off with a grin. "It's fine, really! Can I come in?"

They step aside to make room for her. Inside, next to the doorframe, Sawada's thick rubber boots take up a new slot. Next to his wife's dainty heels and Tsuna's sneakers, they look massive.

Colonnello hops onto her shoulder to grab her ear. Ow. "Alright, I'm taking over her debriefing," he tells the others.

Sawada Sr. frowns. "Just you?"

"It only takes one person, kora. Besides, you've already appointed yourself as the kids' watcher. So, go do your job and watch 'em." The Rain jabs a thumb towards the door behind them. "You too, Cavallone. You've got a monster to train."

Dino groans. The guy's clearly exhausted. He looks like he's just got run over by a war tank, and now Colonnello's telling him to go lie down on the tracks again. "Oh, don't make me go back there."

"Quit being such a coward, kora! Hibari's gonna be delighted to see you. Go on, get outta here. You too, Iemitsu."

Sawada Sr. clicks his tongue but obliges, heading for his boots. With a longer, deeper groan, Dino turns to toe on his own shoes, too. He pauses to give Jai a smile. "I'll see you around?"

"Yeah, 'course!" She tips her head to one side. "Hey, whatever you're doing, take care of yourself. C'mere for a second."

He coughs, bemused. "What?"

"C'mere." Jai beckons him. Taps the spot on her forehead that mirrors his bandage.

"Oh, no." The Sky touches the wound and laughs, the sound flaking around the edges. "Thanks, Jai, but if you heal every bruise I'm going to get over the next few days, it'll probably run you dry. I can take care of this later."

Jai's not quite sure what he means, or what he plans to do over the next few days, but before she can ask, Sawada Sr. pulls the front door open again. The man gives Jai a neutral look. It looks like he's trying to convey some sort of hidden message through his gaze, but she can't quite seem to pick up on it. Hm. "Good to meet you, Jai," he says. "Say, let's have a chat and a drink next time I'm free."

Colonnello shifts on her shoulder. Jai beams back. "Sure thing!"

That said, the two Skies file out peacefully. Dino turns back to wave at them. "Have fun, my friends!"

"You don't _have_ friends, Cavallone," Colonnello retorts, just as the door swings shut behind the two. He clicks his tongue. "Reborn sure has a knack for raising nerds, doesn't he?"

Jai almost chokes on her laughter. "What? No! Dino's not a nerd!"

"He's a lame-ass kid, kora—we're not arguing about this." He hooks a finger around the inside of her ear, knowing that it tickles. "Real-talk, though. You sure you're alright?"

"Yep, I'm—"

The Rain plows right over her. "Shamal couldn't find anything wrong with your head, but you were knocked out for a pretty long time. It was freaking people out, kora."

It was? Whoops. "Sorry about that. Rain Flames'll slow you sometimes, if they get up here." She taps her temple. "They can shut you down pretty fast. They did to me. Since I might've, you know, made a few wrong in-battle decisions when I got in too close, and then I got caught a little by surprise, and, and, geez." The Rain is giving her his Eye of Judgement. "I was out shopping when it happened. I was thinking about buying some new CDs. I wasn't prepared to throw anyone down!"

"Yeah, I'll bet, kora." Colonnello shakes his head. It's hard to interpret his tone. "You know what? Actually, no, forget it. Let's just go over here."

He then proceeds to steer her (by the ear) over to the dining table, which is surprisingly devoid of people. There is, however, a plate of snacks in the middle. Nice. Beautiful. "Hoo, yeah," she says out loud.

"Holy crap, Jai, sit _down."_

Jai grab a gyoza by the toothpick and takes a seat. "Yeah, make yourself comfortable, kora," Colonnello grumbles, planting himself down on the tabletop. "I gotta fill you in on all the garbage you've missed these past few days."

Jai looks around. Doesn't seem like anyone else is in the house. "When did Tsuna's dad get here?"

He jerks his head at the pair of black socks draped over one of the far chairs. "Literally right after you passed out, kora. He's been hanging around ever since."

She bullies another gyoza onto her toothpick. "Cool! How are the kids?"

"Tsuna, Gokudera, and Takeshi are mostly healed. We think Tsuna might be a bit traumatized, or whatever, but that's the bastard's problem to deal with." Colonnello shrugs, like it's no big deal. "As for Basil—that brown-haired kid, you know, Iemitsu's apprentice—he's still recovering in the hospital. Hell, at least he's lucky to survive. Kid would've died if Shamal hadn't gotten there when he did."

Jai leans back, processing that. First, the kids are generally fine, that's good. She'll have to check on them later. In person. "That kid, Basil, was Iemitsu's apprentice?" she asks. "Tsuna's dad's apprentice?"

"Yeah, so he's CEDEF too, kora. Lal's subordinate. They actually work on the same team." Colonnello rocks back. Cracks his neck. Sighs, like life is a bother. "Alright, before you say anything else, I gotta ask—what do you know about the CEDEF?"

Thoughtfully, she bites down on her toothpick. "It's a part of the Vongola Famiglia, of the mafia. That's it, really."

"Yeah, you know what it does?"

"Nope! Just that Lal Mirch is a part of it."

He nods. "Figures, I guess. Now, listen up, kora. Iemitsu doesn't want us to tell you much, partly because he doesn't trust you and partly because he doesn't want civilians involved. But hey, let's face it—you're a hell of a lot more than just some lady we picked up off the sidewalk, right?"

A small laugh slips from her grasp. "You know, that's actually how Reborn first found me! Did he ever tell you when—"

"Like I care! Shut up and don't interrupt!" Though his face doesn't change, laughter shines in his eyes. "This is serious, kora! What I mean is, _average civilian_ or not, we're going to need your help with this whole mess. You know, with your knowledge about Flames. The _kids_ are going to need you." His expression sharpens once more. "So we've decided to fill you on the basic stuff, so that maybe we can figure things out together, and you can promise to keep your mouth shut about all this mafia business that I'm gonna lay down here. Alright? Now, about that the first guy who attacked you—you remember him well enough, right?"

Of course. Who'd forget a guy like that? "Silver hair, super with a sword?" With a blade for an arm, Rain Flames swollen around his skin.

As a new thought strikes her, Jai goes still.

In retrospect, there was something fundamentally wrong with her fight with that man. There was something about their battle that was strange to the point of disconcerting, although—she can't quite place it. But it was important. It was. It _is._

What is it, though?

Huh.

Maybe she can figure it out later.

"Yeah, they call him Superbi Squalo," Colonnello is saying as she refocuses. "He's a real punk. Always has been. And you know the other kid who was there? The blond one? He's called Belphegor, and he's not much better, to be honest. The kid's like a vicious baby. Still, he and Squalo are two of the best assassins that Vongola's ever gotten their hands on, kora. You're lucky they didn't have the chance to finish you off for good before they got outta there."

She makes a frog-face at him. "Pfffffrankly, I'm surprised they didn't."

He squints at her. "Dino rolled in just in time. Caught Belphegor's knife in the air with his whip, right before it would've nailed you. You remember that?"

Oh. Should've thanked Dino while he was here, then. "Not really. My memory's still pretty loopy. But, anyway, hold on a sec."

Jai leans forward. Jabs the toothpick in his direction. "I might be getting this wrong, yeah? But two members of the Vongola attacking a boy from the CEDEF and the future heir to the whole famiglia? Is that kind of infighting supposed to be normal?"

Colonnello gives her a grim half-smile, and a ship sinks in Jai's stomach. She's not going to like this. She can feel it already, like knives in her nerves.

"No, it's not, kora," the Rain replies. "So let me tell you about Vongola's biggest, most ridiculous fuck-up in all of history since its founding. You ready for this?"

Jai bites down on the toothpick. "Hit me with it."

"It's called the _Varia."_

* * *

Jai finds Reborn and Tsuna next to a waterfall in the nearby woodlands. The path isn't well-trodden around here. She's actually gotten lost in these parts before. But today, luckily for her, Tsuna's screams seem to resonate.

Reborn catches sight of her as she steps out from the boughs of a tawny willow tree. She waves at him. He snaps out a glider, leaps up, flies over. Lands neatly in the switch-grass beside her. "Your arm?" he asks, first thing.

She rolls up her sleeve to show him the lack of a scar. "Feels great, actually! You know I've had worse things."

"You melted Squalo's sword while it was still stabbed between your radius and ulna," he replies, completely unimpressed. "Shamal had to operate on it to get the metal particles out of your bloodstream. He thought you were going to die from severe blood poisoning."

Jai beams back. "Man, really? Well, he did a perfect job on it." She'll have to thank him, too.

"You also woke up halfway in the middle of his operation because you were trying to burn the anesthetics out of your body."

"Oh. Ha! Really?" She rubs her chin. "I don't remember that at all. That's cool."

The Sun just shakes his head. Gives up on her, basically. "Did someone bring you up to speed?"

"Yeah, Colonnello just did. I figured I'd find you guys first, see how you're holding up."

They watch as Tsuna loses his grip on the cliff-face and plummets into the cascades. His screech resounds throughout the clearing.

"You really shouldn't have," Reborn replies, flat as a salt pan.

She cackles. Oh, the poor kid. "Can I talk to him?" she asks.

Rather than answering, he hops up, pushes off the trunk of the willow, and flips over onto her shoulder. "About your fight with Squalo," he begins, steadying himself. "I made the wrong decision. I shouldn't have sent you to heal Tsuna and his family when I knew Squalo still had to be dealt with."

"It's fine," she reassures him. Reborn's acknowledgements also tend to be his apologies. "I think I underestimated the guy, anyway."

The Sun places a tiny hand on her jawbone, right below her ear. Jai can feel the pressure ripple through her skull.

It's not that she can't heal herself, of course. With her Flames she can heal every cut, every pit scraped out of her skin. But this headache is a residue, not a wound. It's a bit harder to shake off. It's also pressing around her eyes like a carving knife. Pretty darn uncomfortable.

If Reborn feels the tension beneath his small, tanned hand, he doesn't comment on it. "I know. Normally I'd blame it on your tendency to misjudge the strength of _all_ your opponents, but in this case, nobody could have seen this one coming. Squalo exhibited a level of power that was not supposed to belong to the Varia. But also," he presses down a little harder, which hurts, "at the same time, I made the mistake of overestimating you."

In the back of her throat, Jai makes a small sound. She wasn't expecting that. "Oh."

"Which is why you're going to be trained—"

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Trained? "Hey, just hooold up a minute—"

"You need training if you want to survive your fights," Reborn presses. "Not now, maybe, but after the Varia are dealt with. Lal Mirch has already volunteered to tutor you."

Jai splutters with laughter. "Lal Mirch? _Lal Mirch?"_

"Did I stutter?"

"Well, hey, hey, _hey_, I sure hope you mean 'Lal Mirch' as in the type of red chili, because at least red chili is less likely to _murder _me in some sort of cruel and unusual way."

Reborn's eyebrows rise so high that if it weren't for physical limitations, they'd be shot straight out of the atmosphere, flying for distant galaxies. Which is, well. Weird imagery. "Don't be such a baby." Ah, actually an excellent use of irony. "Lal Mirch's methods are easier than mine."

"A lot of methods," Jai wheezes, "are easier than yours."

"We're not giving you another choice, Jai. Do you want to fail again, like you did on Sunday? Next time a threat shows up, there's no guarantee Dino and Colonnello will arrive in time to save you and the others."

Well, next time there's a threat, she'll just make sure to do better. "I'm," Jai starts to say, only to stop herself.

_I'm strong_. Is that what she wants to say?

Wait. No, Jai isn't strong anymore. Maybe once, a long time ago. Before she fell asleep inside that tomb.

Not now, though.

So, if that's the case, why argue? Why _shouldn't_ she go through a bit of training?

Ten years from now, after she's fully recovered from that period of hibernation, her strength will probably never be questioned again. But that's ten years from now. A decade. A lot can happen in that time. More people like Squalo could show up, for instance.

Reborn's got a point. There'd definitely be long-term benefits if she at least tried to power up a little.

Still, Lal Mirch's training methods are literally hell—and besides that, the idea of training has a couple of…implications to it. "I'm not part of the mafia yet," she says at last. "I don't think I want to be, either."

She used to think being in the mafia would be fun. Now, though?

Things are different now.

The hitman tips his hat forward. "No, and nobody wants you to be, either. This training would help you protect yourself from the mafia. As a member of Tsuna's family, you're also expected to keep yourself, and them, alive."

She shakes her head. "_Am_ I Tsuna's family?"

"If Tsuna dies, will you care?" Reborn shoots back. His gaze prickles. "I thought so."

Jai watches Tsuna lie gasping at the edge of the pool, guarded by peat and sweetbriar. Her headache is trying to kill her, she knows it.

How on earth did she even get here? How did the world lead her up to this point, to these people she's grown to care about? It was only spring when she came to Namimori, when Takeshi paused as he wiped the rain off his nose and asked, _I'm getting you wet, aren't I?_ That was, what, a year ago? No, because there was a winter after that, and then another spring. A year and a half, then. Closer to two.

That's no time at all. That's practically nothing. How did Jai come to care about these people out of _nothing?_

Then Reborn says, quietly, delicately, "If you truly value Tsuna's life, and the lives of his friends, then why not make an effort to keep them?"

Well.

If he was aiming to convince her with that last statement, he's just succeeded. Beyond belief. "Alright, I'll do it," she agrees, feeling only slightly manipulated. "Even though it's really not that necessary, you know? Squalo just caught me off-guard."

"Hubris, Jai. Don't go beneath yourself."

"Lal Mirch is going to destroy me!"

He smirks, utterly without sympathy. "Not if you train with your Dying Will."

A memory alights in her mind. "You know, you remind me of this old song, 'Il Preside'," she tells him. "You wouldn't have heard of it, but it goes—_The children 'round the looping bend, chased by Father Folli, through the fen into the mire, hiding from Old Folli! Run, run, far from home, away from Father Folli!_" She spins around mid-serenade. Her voice breaks with laughter. "_Both his cane and golden spoon will lead to your demi-ise; Father Folli hides the orb, he's the devil in disguise—"_

Reborn cuffs her cheek, incredulous. "You realize you're just asking me to shoot you. Which I would do, but you're not worth the bullet."

"What? You don't like the song? I mean, it's not like—" She gives a small cough. A teeny weeny one. "Like there are any _parallels_ to be found, or anything—"

He gives her the most disgusted flick of the wrist she's ever seen. "Get out of my sight. I'm not kidding," he adds as she doubles over, helpless to humor. "We have better things to be doing right now. Preparing for the Varia, for instance."

With that single name, the mood dives down into its grave. Jai sighs. Straightens. "Can I talk to Tsuna before I go?"

"No," he replies.

It takes a moment for the word to process.

She stalls mid-step towards the clearing where Tsuna is sitting. Glances at Reborn. That's unexpected of him. "No?"

A cool, dark enamel has slid over his eyes. "Don't talk to Tsuna, Jai."

"What? Why not?"

"Because you want to do two things—comfort him, and encourage him. And I can't allow either of those to happen." Darkness and patience gradiate his gaze. "Think of it this way. On Sunday, Tsuna saw a man almost cut Gokudera in half, stab clean through Yamamoto, and gut the life out of a boy his age. Then he watched you fall into what was practically a three-day coma. Immediately after, his long-absent father came home and told him to prepare to defend himself against a group of professional assassins—Squalo among them—who want to murder him for being the heir to a famiglia he doesn't even want. Right now, for the very first time, Tsuna isn't training because I'm forcing him to. He's training because he has an undeniable reason to fear for his own life, along with yours."

The weight of his shadow grows heavy on her shoulder. "There is nothing you can say to comfort him, so long as the Varia are a threat," he continues, "nor can you encourage him, because you were just as unprepared as Tsuna was when Squalo came to town. You've already forfeited that right."

Jai feels small, just a pinky-bone wide. For a moment, she sets her teeth together. "What if I just want to cheer him up?"

The Sun's mouth twitches up. It isn't a nice look. "Do you remember when your conversation with him, just after you fought the Vindice? Tsuna came to you, and you took him to the arched bridge in Wa-shin-an."

Of course Reborn was listening to that conversation. She shouldn't expect anything different. His prying scheme has become a bit of an established fact, like saying the sun is hot or the planet is round—_one plus one equals two_, and in the same seam, _Reborn will eavesdrop on you._

"Tsuna told you that he was afraid of the dangers that the mafia could pose," he continues. "And of course, you wanted to cheer him up. So, essentially, you told him your perspective on things, which was…what?"

"I told him—"

Jai pauses.

_I'm scared of the mafia_, Tsuna had said. So Jai took the names of the people he'd grown to care about, and reminded him that they're players in the mafia, too. And she ignored the murder, the greed, vice dripping from every pore of the name. She said to him, she told him, _this is what the mafia can be_. Kindness. Friendship. Excitement.

What had she been _thinking?_

The truth is, if Jai had been a little too late on that Sunday afternoon, those boys would be dead. The cleaving, sundering dead. And nothing else would have mattered.

"I told him to look on the bright side," Jai finishes, and rests a hand over her eyes.

She'd just wanted to cheer him up. Wasn't thinking. Wasn't seeing. Didn't even _know_ she'd been giving Tsuna the wrong definition of 'the mafia' until Verde came to town, and after that…well.

"It did work," Reborn admits. "He was happier for a while. But it wouldn't be productive now, would it?"

The sunlight makes red blotches beneath her eyelids. "No, it wouldn't," she says, blinking them open.

Her words on the bridge have become the worst sorts of lies ever since last Sunday. So if she walks up to him now, it wouldn't be so unreasonable to see spite in his eyes. A grudge there, festering. That's how mistrust is born. It starts small in fear, fed by a wick of blame.

Jai has made a mistake. She thinks of Tsuna with his leg turned backwards, and then also of Verde's metal dogs. The way they had burned—peeling, oozing. Bubbling up in all the colors of an oil spill, a dirty palette. And to think that just a month before, Jai still thought the mafia was pretty fun. She was wrong, wasn't she?

Jai has made multiple, massive mistakes. Hasn't she?

In the pool, Tsuna gingerly peels the waterweeds from his hair. He doesn't look over at either of them.

She shakes her head and asks, "At the very least, can you tell him I'm feeling better now?"

"Of course," Reborn acquiesces. "Is that all?"

"Yeah, that's all."

He hops off onto the ground. The sweep of the willow tickles the ground, making a show of lights on the grass.

His voice dips with a suspicion of sympathy. "Then leave. You can come back when you have something better in mind to say."

* * *

The Varia is an assassination squad, comprised of the deadliest men and women that the Vongola Famiglia can afford. They're efficient. Merciless. Unknown to public eye. Superbi Squalo is a favorite among them. But their history is long, and lonely.

Eight years ago, the Varia attempted a coup to take control of the famiglia's assets. Their rebellion—otherwise known as the Cradle Affair—was led by Xanxus, fourth son of the Vongola don, who had apparently earned the fond nickname of "il matto", or _madman_, over in Italy. The logic there is that he must've been crazy to launch an uprising against his own father and brothers with what little backing he had at the time. (Also, he had a reputation for getting angry a lot? Apparently.)

Anyway, predictably, the rebellion was annihilated. Xanxus disappeared. Presumed dead by everyone, up until around midnight of last Saturday when the CEDEF were attacked, and Xanxus made his return known to all of Vongola's men both in Italy and overseas.

Only this time, the Varia aren't after the Ninth's head. No, they're after—

"This?" Jai taps the ring on Takeshi's finger. "They'd kill people over a small thing like this?"

Takeshi laughs. Behind him, his father runs a towel through his hair. "It's a century-old symbol," the man explains. "The full set is worn by the don and his Guardians. You can't take control of the Vongola without them."

She lifts Takeshi's hand up into the light. "It's not even a complete ring, though! It's just half! Only half of it!"

"But when you unite the two halves, you get a seventh of the power of the entire famiglia. It's quite valuable in that regard."

The Vongola Rain Guardian Half-Ring is a thin, drab band, the color of baking concrete. The little shield embedded into it is missing its whole left side, cutting out of the tiny droplet in the center.

Looking at this ring gives her a bit of déjà vu. As if she's seen it before.

But there's no way she could have. She knows that for a fact. So, what, is her intuition just messing with her or something?

Huh. Curious.

"Unbelievable," she proclaims at last, letting go of Takeshi's hand. "What a way to set up an inheritance, huh?"

Tsuyoshi scoffs through his nose, like he may or may not agree. "It's the Italian tradition." He tosses a bottle of water to Takeshi. "Fifteen minute break, kid. Then we're back to sparring."

His son catches it with reverence. "_Thank _you," he breathes, before trying to twist open the cap.

"And as for you—" Tsuyoshi hits her shins with one of the sticks. "Next time you drop by, we're not stopping any training sessions for you, alright? So don't go waltzing in here like you own the place. You don't."

Jai's already laughing as she whips back around. "If you just slapped my shins with a _shin_ai," she manages to say, "wouldn't you call that a pretty…a pretty _shin-slapping_ pun?"

"Jai," the man says, like her name is a swear. Behind him, Takeshi cackles.

Jai sits down next to the open shoji doors near the kamidana, where the breeze flows around her neck. The tatami feels rough on her feet. This dojo is an old place. A bit dusty and creaky here and there, but Tsuyoshi walks across these mats like he's lived here all his life, doing decades' worth of concentrated katas.

"I blame my sweaty hands," Takeshi says, before plopping down next to Jai and handing her the unopened bottle. His cheeks are still flushed from the workout. "I need…hey, uh, bottle opener?"

With a laugh, she pops the cap for him. "At your service!"

"You're the _best_."

Tsuyoshi sits down on her other side. He eyes Takeshi with a fair amount of disappointment. "Son," he says.

Takeshi takes a precious sip. "Dad," he replies.

"Don't 'Dad' me. We've still got a long way to go if you can't even muster the strength to open a water bottle."

The boy lets out a sheepish sort of laugh. Jai tugs him into her side and asks, "That guy's been working you hard, huh?"

His grin presses his cheek into her shoulder. "So hard," he agrees. "I can't even feel my legs. But I guess I can use a sword, now, so that's something!"

"You gain some limbs, you lose some limbs, am I right?" She pats his back as he chokes on his bottle. "Anyway, I came to see how you're doing. On a scale of stale to fresh, how are you feeling?"

Takeshi lets out another high, breathy laugh. He looks well enough. His skin has no marks, and he moves as smoothly as usual. "Fresh? I dunno!" He looks at her with his squinty, honey-colored eyes. "You didn't need to come up here just to see us, you know. I'm pretty sure you should be resting back home..." A thumbs-up. "I'll be fine, anyway!"

Jai laughs too, and drops her head onto his. "Yeah, 'course you'll be fine. But we had a pretty close call on Sunday. It's just good to see you."

The kid's voice shakes a bit. "Aw, geez. Okay, Jai."

"Takeshi." Slowly, Tsuyoshi gets to his feet. "Could you go fetch the bokken in the storage room?"

Takeshi rises, too. His face is alight. "We're switching to bokken?"

"Don't get too excited—they'll hurt more when they hit you. Still, you _are_ ready for them. Storage room. Go on."

With a tiny salute, the boy jogs out of the room. Jai helps Tsuyoshi gather up the bamboo shinai they were using before. They're bundling the sticks back into their cloths when the man says, completely neutral, "You could always teach him something new, to help him along."

Jai looks at his thoughtful face. She knew this was coming. She knew people would be expecting this from her the moment Reborn turned to her and asked, _is that all?_ As if what he really wanted to ask was, _is that all you're going to do? _Colonnello had been hinting at it, too—he'd said, _the kids are going to need you._

Tsuna and the others are fighting for their lives. And what's Jai gonna do, just _encourage_ people? No. Those kids are going to need more.

She sits down cross-legged. Her hands spread in front of her like lashes will spread for the eyes. "Takeshi only learned about his Flames a few months ago. Takeshi has a little less than a week to prepare for this. The techniques I know about—as in, all of them, not just the killing ones—need lots of time, and not a whole lot of hurry…"

Even showing Viper his Desert Flames felt like too much of a push. One month didn't feel long enough for him to truly grasp a sense of his own power. There are risks in gorging yourself, burning hard and too bright.

But Jai let him learn it, because Viper's life had been at risk.

And now, so was everyone's.

Tsuyoshi busies himself with the strings of the shinai. "So you can't give him anything new? Anything that might help him survive?"

Jai tips her head towards her knee, and rubs at her head. "I've shown the kids their Flames. I've taught them some tricks. It might not seem like much, but the one thing that'll really help them out is their awareness of their own Flames, so _any_ small exercise will help 'em." She leans back. "I can help them a little more, though. Individually. Just give me time to work out a plan, and I'll see what's going for 'em."

The Rain in front of her lets out a laugh. "I was hoping you'd already have some sort of trump card to hand out. Ah, well. The sword will have to do."

"It's a trustworthy weapon, the sword," she agrees, before balling up one of her socks and flinging it at the nearest wall. It lands with a satisfying smack. On the other side, Takeshi's eavesdropping presence skitters away in a tactical retreat.

That dweeb.

"It's smart," she continues, turning back to the kid's dad. "Reliable. And you teach it well, you know."

For one brief instant, Tsuyoshi looks at her like she's his executioner. She freezes.

"I know I can't say much for the future," she says, her fingers clenched around her feet, "and I know it must really, really suck to be in your position and wear those shoes, but I believe the past is a trap for the mind. Tsuyoshi."

"Do you? No, but I'm only thinking about the irony of it." A breath of laughter. "Takeshi's grown so prideful these past couple of days. I was like that, once. I can't blame my son for this, but today I don't feel proud of much of anything."

Jai first met Tsuyoshi in his restaurant, the sunlight a hot brand on the back of her neck as he asked her in no audible words if she would ever do his family harm. Today, there is not a single person left on this earth who Jai trusts more. If there ever comes a time where she has to give her secrets to the safe-keeping of anyone in the world, then she would give them, without hesitation, to this man.

She holds out her hand, and he takes it, after a moment. "Don't tell me I don't have any reason to feel like this." Oddly, his voice is warm.

She shakes her head. No, he does. "You have the right to your own feelings. But, well. Please don't feel _too_ much of the bad stuff, yeah? They say dread and regret are ruining emotions."

The Rain makes a disbelieving sound and gesture, and Jai wonders if that was the right thing to say. "Is that so?"

"There's an old saying, from a place I knew." It doesn't translate well in Japanese, though. She tries it anyway. "'Regret and dread's the wasting, envy the bittering, rage the maddening. Hysteria's what binds the young, though hatred lies to everyone.'" She grins. "That sounded better in my head."

"Then what's a beautiful emotion?"

"Are you asking me?" Jai laughs. "Nostalgia, maybe?"

Tsuyoshi glances at the tattered floor. The soles of his feet brush along the knolls. "Nostalgia? Maybe. Unless some memories are tainted. Jai, haven't you killed a person before?"

Jai didn't seen this coming.

She's relatively surprised, in fact. "Ah, yeah."

"Do you wish you never did? Never needed to?"

That would've been nice, wouldn't it? Wouldn't they all have wanted that? "Yeah."

"Then you've handled it well," he returns, "because when my son picks up that sword, all I know is that I'm teaching him my worst mistakes. It makes me angry just thinking about it." His fingers and thumb clasp the soft, brown lines of her palm. Jai almost doesn't believe him; she's never seen this man get mad before. Irritated, frustrated, yes. But never _angry._

"How did _you_ let go of your regrets?" he asks her.

The whole back of her scalp feels cold. "I don't really know," she replies. Jai doesn't regret much of anything anymore. She doesn't feel much nostalgia, either. To be honest, Jai doesn't know why Tsuyoshi is comparing his mistakes with hers. There's no purpose to it. The one belief that Jai will ever bear to worship is that Yamamoto Takeshi rests in good hands—his father's hands—which have shed their bloodstained cells, and have been rinsed by the weathering of fatherhood, and even when stained could never handle any other person in the world with any greater measure of love, and fondness. That's all that will ever have mattered, at the end.

Her headache is really pushing her now. It's a daunting task to put things together into words. She tries to, anyway. "You tend to measure yourself by your worst. But Takeshi and Reborn and the others…when they look at you, the quality of you, they're blown away. We're all blown away. You're made of more than just your crimes and your punishments."

Sometimes it feels like all her wisdom was borrowed from other people's mouths, so that whenever someone asks her something personal like this, her own thoughts are suddenly inadequate in comparison.

"Oh. Maybe that's why I'm still here, hm?" Tsuyoshi's mouth doesn't move, but his eyes have a certain twinkle to them that tells her he is smiling. "Well, at least the boy still likes me now."

Jai snorts. Well, there is that.

Takeshi is returning with the bokken. His footsteps grow louder from behind the far wall.

"I do appreciate it, Jai," Tsuyoshi murmurs. In a single second, his shoulders easing, like all his worries are melting away. Another two seconds. Now he looks once more like the man his son can recognize.

They look at each other. Jai understands.

He pulls her to her feet.

* * *

That night, Jai sleeps for twelve hours in her blank white apartment, refusing to dream. It's a good, painless sleep. Her head feels much better when she wakes. A _lot_ better.

Jai rolls out of bed, practically vibrating with energy.

Yeah, she feels _super_.

She makes breakfast. The bread comes out slightly burnt on only one edge of the crust. She is overcome with the urge to tiger-suplex her toaster.

Then, Sawada Iemitsu knocks on her door.

"Good morning!" He beams, squinting up at her and her snarl of bed-hair. Jai gets the impression that he's not too fond of the huge height difference between them. It's worst for Tsuna, actually, who has to loll his head back just to look at her. Poor kid. Always gets the _short_ end of the stick.

For a moment she thinks that Tsuna's dad might be here for some kind of talk, but then he folds his broad arms across his chest and says, "I'm off to the hospital today. Care to come with?"

In Namimori Medical Center, on the third floor, second room to the right, Jai walks in and finds the foreign boy. Brown-haired. Italian, with maybe some kind of distant Greek background. His wrists are small white slips sticking out of the hospital gown. They look fragile. His eyebrows are drawn, forming a question on his head.

"His condition is stable," Sawada explains, "though it doesn't seem like he'll be waking up for a while. Unfortunately, Tsuna doesn't have much time to spare, and I need Basil to act as his training partner. Any way you can speed up the healing process?"

Jai rolls up her sleeves. "Probably! Let's see."

The beeps of the monitor lag behind the ticking of the clock. She sits down on the bed and peels the gown from Basil's side, pressing a hand against the bandages.

It looks like Reborn got to him in time, from the feel of it. Reborn's a slower healer, but generally a perfectionist. He works efficiently. The only thing this'll leave is a scar, and maybe some lazy phantom pain.

Jai always hesitates to heal other people's scars. They can be reminders. Lessons. Legacies, even, leaving maps on your skin. She doesn't make a habit of leaving them on purpose, but sometimes people want their scars for the keeping.

She pulls her hand away. At any rate, it's not like she can't get rid of them later, if he asks.

Instead, she places both palms against his chest and pours, like flooding sunlight in a garden. The boy's brow loosens. His cheeks turn rosy. Sweat breaks across his skin.

"Reborn told me about your abilities," Sawada Sr. says from behind her. "But he was right when he told me you needed to see it in action first." His boots scuff the floor. "You're very good, aren't you?"

She grins. Then tilts her head, trying to let him see it. Her eyes stay fixed on the kid. "That's your call, I guess. Though I do have a lot of experience as a healer, so, thank you!"

Jai doesn't know what kind of person Basil is, but she remembers the way Tsuna screamed with the pain of a broken limb as he grabbed this boy by the waist and dragged him to safety, across rubble and glass, away from the swordsman with silver hair. She remembers the way this kid's Flame flared from his forehead, crystalline bright, like the face of a glacier when it looks east.

In the manner of the mafia, a system built from failures and favors, she thinks she might just owe him a debt.

"He'll wake up tomorrow morning, probably." Jai stands up to face her watcher. "He just needs to sleep it off some, and then he's good to go."

Sawada lets out a surprised laugh. Short, but loud. Boisterous. "Great! You have my thanks, then. We've been awfully worried about this kid."

"Hey, no problem!" She salutes, and turns to leave.

"Oh, just a moment, signorina." As she pauses, the Sky gives her a solid pat on the back, before exiting the hallway himself. "Follow me. I think there's one last stop for us."

The walk to Tsuna's house is surprisingly easy. Jai thought their conversation would be heavier, since he's Tsuna's mafia dad, and she's the foreign musician who lives in a cheap apartment without an ID and sometimes hangs out with his kid. As a mafia dad, Sawada Iemitsu has the social obligation to deal with such suspicious individuals as herself. Specifically, the obligation to escort her into a black car, drive her to the remote countryside, and then…

Yeah, everyone knows what would be next.

But no, the walk to Tsuna's house is very light. Mostly because Sawada just talks about his wife. Sawada refuses to stop talking about his wife.

Sawada _can't_ stop talking about his wife.

"Ah, yes, Nana's too good for me. I'm a lucky man," Sawada puffs, as Jai watches him in awe. This is incredible. She didn't even mean for the conversation to lead this way. All she did to set this off was mention the name 'Nana' in passing. Just once. A single time.

Sawada cracks the thick cords of his neck. "Of course, I'm lucky to have Tsu-kun as well," he muses. "Reborn's shaping him up into a strong man! But my wife—she's had the bigger hand in raising him, I admit it. He has her charm, her smile, her adorable look…wouldn't you agree?"

"Wowie," Jai replies. "Yeah, absolutely."

"He'll grow out of it eventually of course. But Nana is…" Sawada sighs. "What an angel. It's lovely to have her around again. The closest comfort you can find in my line of work is only with strangers. There's certainly no affection in the team, particularly with Lal Mirch. But, anyway! What do you think of her?"

"Lal Mirch?"

"No, my wife."

"Oh." Jai considers that. She thinks back to just a week ago, when most everyone else was outside creating some chaos or another. Sawada Nana had served her a cup of perfect tea and Korean cakes, and they'd sat down and had a chat with each other for a while—which is actually pretty rare, since Jai usually hangs out with Reborn and his group.

Sawada Nana tends to talk about her husband a lot, too. She also talks about Tsuna's grades. And the cute charm of having so many little children in the house.

That day, Reborn built a knife-thrower in the yard and sicced it on Tsuna and his gang. Sawada Nana had glanced outside. Saw millions of knives peppering the grass. 'Oh, my,' she'd said, just, _completely_ nonchalant. 'It looks like they're doing a little rough-housing, aren't they? Ah, well. Boys will be boys!'

So, see, Sawada Nana _cracks Jai up_.

But no, yes, Jai does hold a great amount of respect for that woman.

"She's great!" she tells Sawada Sr. with a laugh. "One of the happiest people I've ever met! Hard to find someone who wouldn't like her."

Sawada Sr. chuckles. "Right answer!" He nods to himself. "Yes, well, anyway. I apologize. I've been talking quite a lot about my family, but what about yours, Jai? Tell me about yourself."

Jai grins at the sky. For no reason in particular. The air just tastes particularly sweet today, is all. "I have no living relatives," she tells him. "I used to have an adopted sister, though. She's passed away, but that was a while back, so don't worry about it. I'm not married, and I don't have kids, either."

Technically, she has kids that aren't hers. That is to say, she has to make sure that Rokudo's group doesn't die from unsanitary living conditions. She makes them use her shower sometimes. Also, she just looks out for Takeshi and his friends by default. Sometimes Fuuta just follows her around for a day, and Jai has to remind him that they can't steal other people's dogs, even though it's tempting. They usually end up having hot chocolate and honey-and-cheese sandwiches back at her apartment.

All those kids are a group project, though. They're not so much her responsibility as they are _everyone's_ responsibility. Lal Mirch, Fon, Tsuyoshi, even Viper and Skull—they all do their part to help the children out. Besides, everyone calls them Reborn's kids, anyway. So Jai doesn't think they really count.

Sawada is nodding again. "Well, I'd say you're a little too young for a child of your own, anyway. Did you just graduate? Looking for some job opportunities?"

"Nah, I already have a cool job! No need for looking anywhere."

"Oh, really? Tsuyoshi's a lucky man, then!" His laughter is a low, rich sound. "That is a surprise, though. You're not working towards any bigger dream?"

Jai beams at him. "Not really," she admits. "This is a good place to be."

Sawada Iemitsu digests that. Jai wonders what he already knows about her. Reborn and the others would have told him some things already, of course.

Truth is, Jai's heard a heck of a lot about this man. She heard it all before even shaking the man's hand. Sawada Iemitsu gets around, apparently. He's director of the CEDEF. The mafia knows him. Sees him.

Lal Mirch says he's a good man. A commander. _Never should've had a kid, though_, she tells Jai, _what was the idiot thinking? _Colonnello thinks the man's two-faced. _Ambitious, too, you know? Real competitive. But hey, I like the guy. You just gotta treat him tough sometimes. _Fon remembers Sawada Iemitsu by his undeniable skill in battle—says that they tried to kill each other once, a very long time ago, before anybody ever knew anybody. Viper won't talk about him. Skull is wary of him. Nobody knows what Verde thinks, since he's long gone now. Chased out of Namimori.

At some point, a little while after dropping into Namimori, Lal Mirch took it upon herself to dig up and destroy _every_ stash of liquor that her commanding officer had placed in various nooks and crannies of the Sawada household. Jai knows this because one day she'd stepped through the front door and saw the floor swarming with alcohol. Dozens of glazed, coppery bottles nudging for space on the hardwood. Jai remembers this because she wasn't allowed inside the house on that day. Reborn told her it was a training exercise. Only Skull stopped to tell her what it really was, afterwards.

It was Lal Mirch and Colonnello who told Tsuna that his father was in the mafia.

For the sake of the kid, they'd explained to Jai. If Reborn wouldn't tell Tsuna, then _they_ would. It's their obligation. They understand Sawada Iemitsu. The man's earned their respect through his work in the mafia, the sovereignty. It's only right, then, that they treat his neglected family with as much decency as they can manage—and if that means doing what's best for his son, then yes, that's what they'll do.

_And you know_, Colonnello had said to her, _a boy's got a right to know where his father went, so he can take the long road over there and beat the shit outta him._

So, they told him. Tsuna didn't take the revelation very well.

Tsuna still doesn't like to talk about it.

It must be tough, having his father back in the house.

That said, Sawada Iemitsu turns out to be a complicated man. He strikes her as someone who likes to surprise others. Jai can appreciate at least that. She likes those people who work to liven other people's days. World wouldn't be the same without them.

He's the kind of guy to keep an eye out for, anyway.

They step up onto Tsuna's front porch. Sawada tugs out his keys. They flash white in the light of the sunrise. "We're a bit early for the meeting, but everyone else should be arriving in about…oh, ten minutes or so?" He flashes his watch at her. 6:48 AM. "Feel free to relax in the meantime."

"Meeting?" Jai echoes as he lets them inside.

He smiles. "Lal Mirch will be calling to make her report. It won't take very long, and—how should I say this? Most of it will probably fly over your head, I'm sorry to say. But Reborn told me that it wouldn't hurt to include you, regardless. Just in case."

In case of what, she isn't sure. But it doesn't hurt to go with the flow, does it? "Huh. Alright!"

A wink. "Thank you. Also, I think my wife is still asleep, so if you could keep things quiet down here…"

"Oh, yeah, o' course."

He disappears down the hall. Jai listens to his retreating feet, before shaking off her own shoes. The house tastes like dust, the silence funereal. The window light diffuses in a thousand shades of gold, as if someone had cut a cadmium chalk and rolled it in paper, smoked it, gave mist to the room.

There are no other footsteps in the house, but she can feel the spit of Gokudera's Flames from somewhere inside the dining room. There's also an odd crinkling sound coming from someplace next to the stairs.

She walks over to the banister. Lambo and I-Pin have somehow wedged themselves between the folds of the stack of spare blankets. I-Pin is sleeping soundly.

Lambo is not. He squints up at her. "Oh, s'you," he mumbles.

Jai kneels down. The toddler wiggles his way out of the blankets. The crinkling noise is coming from a little white ball in his hands. It looks like just a crumpled sheet of ordinary printer paper. "Kinda early for you to be up, isn't it?" she murmurs as the boy hooks himself over her shoulder.

He kicks his tiny, warm feet into her stomach. Oof. "Reborn woke me up before he took Dame-Tsuna outside," he grumbles. His words are muffled in her sweater.

"Yeah? Why'd he wake you?"

"B'cause he suuucks."

Jai laughs. "Okay." I-Pin looks like she's practically melted into the blankets, so Jai just tucks the whole stack of folds under her right arm. Like she's carrying one huge, soft cocoon. It's pretty great, actually. She stands back up, cradling Lambo in her left. "Where do you wanna go? Back to bed?"

Lambo tries to slap her back. It feels more like a nice pat, though. "No."

"Fuuta's room?"

A pause. "No."

"Bianchi's?"

The boy lets out an incoherent grumble.

"That's okay. You wanna get a snack?"

A longer pause. "M'kay."

"Nice. I'm pretty hungry myself. What's that you've got there?"

Lambo unfolds the crumpled paper and sort of smushes it against her face. It's an illustration of Tsuna made entirely in cranberry-colored crayon. Tsuna looks sad. His hair is the length of his body. There's a very, very small dinosaur sitting next to him, holding what appears to be a crudely-scribbled rifle.

The caption beneath it reads, in bold Roman letters, 'GWARGGGH GRAPEFRUITS! UN MILIONE DEATH POWER!'

Jai tries to contain her laughter. It's a useless effort, though. Lambo can probably feel her shoulders shaking. "Whoa! That's pretty cool."

The toddler shakes his head. "I messed it up. It's st_oo_pid."

"Really? Looks fine to me."

"Mmmnnno, that one's bad. Gonna make a better one."

Jai rubs his back. The other guys told her that Lambo is actually the one Guardian to worry about the least, since he has his time-twisting bazooka to help him out. But Jai hasn't seen him use that thing in a while. And this kid is small. Really small. Hopefully Reborn can just take him to a safe place when the fighting starts. "'Ey, that's the spirit."

They enter the dining room. Gokudera glances up, hastily shoving his hands into the pockets of his hoodie.

Jai beams back at him, an onion girl in one arm and a broccoli boy in the other. "What's up?" she asks.

"Aho-deraaa," Lambo groans into her collar. Poor kiddo.

"Oh, it's you. What are you—no, don't bring _them_ in here." Gokudera shrinks away from her and the children. "Take the brats upstairs or something."

"What, you don't like your vegetables?"

The face he makes is one of absolute, unadulterated disgust.

Jai snickers. Ah, yeah, she loves this boy. "I'm just making us a snack," she says as she sets the I-Pin-cocoon down on the table. "Are you here for this whole meeting thing, too?"

To her surprise, the Storm gets up and follows her as she moves into the kitchen. He slouches against the island. "Tch. No. I mean, maybe. Apparently." His posture droops even further. Sheesh. That's terrible for his spine. "Ugh, why are _you_ here for the meeting? You don't even know what's been going on in Italy."

Jai shrugs her free shoulder. "Dunno, man. Sawada brought me here. I'm just looking for a good time." She takes out a box of rice crackers from the pantry. "Shouldn't you be training right now? Tsuna and Takeshi should've already gotten started today."

"I would be. But I, uh, got hurt while I was practicing a move." His expression twists, losing some of its darkness. "Shamal wouldn't heal me because I'm 'too uncute', or some bull like that—you know how he is—so I still need to find someone who can, you know…"

Ah, so that's why he's making conversation willingly. Jai catches on. She rips open a rice cracker. "Where're you hurt?"

Gokudera shows her his hands.

Jai drops the rice cracker.

Luckily, it lands right into Lambo's stubby fingers. The toddler bites it in half, crumbs spraying over her sweater.

"It's not as bad as it looks," Gokudera mutters, but his head is tucked so low that his hair, vermillion pale, catches in the lashes of his eyes. He smells like blood and bike-leather.

Jai sets Lambo down on her feet. Then she gestures for the Storm's hands. "I know when things aren't as bad as they look. This isn't one of those cases."

"Whatever. Just—just heal them. If you can."

Gokudera holds his hands out over the island. Jai doesn't understand why he thinks this isn't bad. They look like they've gone through a shredder, given time to scab, and then were slowly simmered over steam. Nails torn. Fingerpads flayed. From the bumps of his wrists and downward, these don't even look like hands anymore.

Yeah, holy guacamole. Doesn't this kid have some kind of pain threshold?

Jai wraps them in a gauze of fire. Yellow light cradles the shadow in Gokudera's cheeks, the sun's cusp held around his chin and the white of his neck. He watches, awake and alert, as new flesh forms in the abrasions of his palms. "Geez, Gokudera," she murmurs. "What were you doing to yourself?"

Gokudera's eyes slice upward, a spectrum inside of them. He hesitates. His voice is cutting. "Shut up. I wasn't trying to do this, obviously. I was improving my bombs. I just screwed up because Shamal's advice always goes to—to shit."

Jai lets out a little huff of laughter. She turns his hands, curls his fingers. His knuckles jut out at her like sabres of warm bone.

"I don't care what anyone thinks. Shamal's not a good mentor," Gokudera continues. He's almost growling now, though he tries to keep his volume low. "I mean, I thought he was, since he taught me when I was a kid. 'Course I didn't know any better back then. I'm not learning anything useful from him now." He stretches his neck. Pops it. Sounds like satisfaction. "I need Lal Mirch."

"You do," Jai agrees. Lal Mirch has a way of _working_ with kids like him. She's the one who practically bullied him out of smoking, anyway. Which is good. Healthier for him. It's a shame that she's continents away. "I never thought you'd say so, though. I thought you hated Lal Mirch."

The Storm rolls his eyes. "Yeah, she's the friggin' spawn of hell. But she—she knows how I fight, so it'd be better than trying to teach myself."

Knowing Gokudera, he's probably pushing himself harder and with more determination than any of the other kids. Trying to compensate for the lack of a good mentor by overcompensating with his work. "You know that when the Varia come, it won't just be you, Tsuna, and Takeshi against them," she reminds him. "Everyone's training hard, but it's not like Dino and Fon and everyone else can't fight, too. They wouldn't put you guys up one-on-one against elite assassins."

His charred brows begin to furrow. "I know that. Oi, what're you getting at?"

"It's just a thought. It ain't right for you to be working so hard that you start hurting yourself this bad. Not when you got people behind you, right? You _can_ afford to abide by your body's limits." She pulls a new tent of skin over the open patches of his hand. "Alright, good as new."

Her Flames die. Gokudera flexes his fingers. "Huh. Thanks," he mutters.

"No problem. If you start losing fingers, though, just remember I can't regrow those."

"I _won't_. Shut up."

She yawns. "You want a snack? Or tea, or something?"

He shrugs, still staring at her work. Then, he reaches into his pockets. Slides his half-ring onto his wedding finger. "Sure, I guess."

"Neat." Jai opens the tea-dedicated cupboard. "Hm, okay. Do you want chai tea or Jai tea?"

A startled cough. "The hell is _Jai_ tea?"

"It's like chai tea, but brewed with all my love and joy."

"What the hell? No, I want chai tea."

"Good! 'Cause there is no Jai tea. I have no love or joy." Behind her, Gokudera splutters. Jai cracks a full grin. "Jokes! No, but in reality, all we have is green tea." She takes out the lonely green box from the pantry and sets it on the counter. Then she puts the kettle on top of the stove, and lights her Sun Flames beneath it. Gokudera looks torn between physical combustion and homicide.

In the hall, the front door swings open with a click and a creak. Dino's presence seems to shiver upon entrance, Fon's sharper tones of flame following his. Their voices aren't audible, but Gokudera holds himself carefully in his seat. "That's Cavallone," the Storm announces, bright-eyed.

Who-hoa. Jai turns around fully. "You can tell? How?"

The boy ignores her for a moment. "And…Fon, too, I think. Yeah, 's gotta be. Can't be anyone else." He pins her with a stare so calm, it seems to belong to a different person. "Am I right? Cavallone and Fon?"

"Yeah. Yeah. How? Wait!" A grin warms her cheeks. "You can sense them? Can you really?"

Gokudera rolls his eyes. "I've been working on it," he admits. "Sensing…people. And, uh, doing stuff with my Flames. Just little exercises and whatever, like you keep telling us to do."

"Simple methods are good methods," she reminds him. "But seriously, that's incredible. You realize how hard it is to single a person out in a house as diluted with Sky Flames as this one? And from this distance? Your progress is fantastic."

He scowls at her, even as the line of his shoulders unknots itself. "Quit smiling at me like that. You creep people out."

Jai laughs, and almost shoots something back, but then Dino and Fon draw near, their voices louder than their footsteps.

"That's five years back, of course," Dino is telling Fon as he steps into the kitchen, "but then again, I was only in Hong Kong for a little while before we switched trips to the north. Oh, good morning, Jai."

"What the hell happened to you?" Gokudera asks in wonder, snatching the words right out of Jai's mouth.

"And good morning to you too, Gokudera-kun," Dino adds. The blond is littered in cuts and scrapes of all sorts, some scabbed, others touched with dirt and clover stains. His hoodie is so torn, it looks like a cold autumn draught could blow straight through. He tries to smile. It pulls at a bruise under his eye. He winces.

Sitting on the Sky's shoulder, Fon smiles with better success. He looks a little better. Not so beaten up, at any rate. Still just as pale, though. "Hello, you two."

Jai shakes her head. "Morning. You guys look beat! Want some tea?"

Gokudera is kind enough to pull out a stool. Dino knocks his foot against the legs, almost trips, but manages to collapse onto the cushion. "I've had better days than this," he proclaims. "Also, yes, please, Jai."

"Seriously, what the hell?" Gokudera folds his arms. "I thought you were training Hibari, not jumping in front of a friggin' train."

Fon chuckles. Dino drops his head into his palm. "You say that like they have different results."

"You're the boss of a famiglia of over five-thousand men!" the boy hisses back. "Hibari's still in high school. How the hell are you so pathetic that a high-schooler can hand you your ass?"

The mafia don lets out a sigh. "Did you know that Kyouya's strength and learning speed will increase exponentially whenever he gets mad?" He points at Fon. "Guess who knew that? Guess who always knows exactly what to say to piss Kyouya off?"

Fon pats his hand. "Now, now. You must admit, it's very effective."

Gokudera makes a peculiar expression, like he's eaten something sour. "How strong is Hibari now?"

"Oh, fairly," Fon replies, at the same time Dino moans, "Immensely."

Jai pours the boiling water from the kettle into four tagged teacups. Lambo looks to be snoozing on the kitchen mat. He looks comfortable. Best not step on him. "Who else is coming for the meeting?" she asks.

Dino and Fon exchange glances. "Tsuyoshi and Shamal aren't coming," Fon murmurs, "and you and Iemitsu are already here, which means that we're only waiting on Reborn, Colonnello, and Skull, at the moment."

"Oh, those guys." Jai sets the teacups down on front of them, one by one. She grins at their quiet 'thank-you's. "What's Skull been up to, anyway? I haven't seen him lately."

"Reborn assigned him to Rokudo and Chrome. He's supposed to be keeping an eye on their training progress."

That means that Rokudo and Dokuro were given the Mist Ring to hold on to. Which means that they've unofficially become Tsuna's Mist Guardians.

Not that it could've been anyone else besides them, but. Hm. Fancy that. She wonders how Rokudo was convinced.

So, officially, those two are the Mists, Gokudera is the Storm, Takeshi is the Rain, Ryohei the Sun, Hibari the Cloud, and Lambo the Lightning. They paint an interesting tableau. It's kind of funny, considering how little they all get along with each other.

But that's how Guardianship goes, at any rate. It's a unity of things. Take six voussoirs of the most ridiculous shapes, and they'll still fit together, so long as there's a keystone. Take six different people and it won't matter if they love each other or hate each other, if they wish for the deaths or the greatest aspirations of each other—they'll always remember that they're connected, that they form the strength of that arch. That's how it was with Jai's old friends, anyway. So who knows. Maybe it'll happen here.

The front door opens again. "And that'll be them," Dino says. Jai sips her scalding tea, and yearns for the holidays.

A minute later, Reborn, Colonnello, and Skull enter the kitchen on Sawada's broad shoulders. Bianchi is a step behind them. Jai waves at them. "Oh, hey! Good morning!"

Skull waves back. "'Tsup?"

"You look like roasted hell," Bianchi greets Dino. Dino wheezes a laugh.

_"Is that Jai?"_

That's Lal Mirch's voice. It sounds tinny, coming from the phone in Sawada's hand. Jai perks up. "Lal Mirch! Hey! How're you doing?"

Bianchi goes around the island to stand next to her. _"I'm fine,"_ Lal Mirch replies through the phone. _"It's good to hear you. Is everyone else there?"_

Sawada pulls out another stool. "Yes, that's everyone. You can start." He sets the phone down at the center of the counter.

_"Good. I have Visconti on the line."_

Everyone straightens in their spots, except for Jai. Jai has no idea who Visconti is. She sips her tea.

"Visconti?" Dino parrots. "That's…That's a surprise. And this is secure?"

_"Yes. I'll put this on speaker."_

There's a burst of white noise. A crackle. Then, a slow, deep voice takes Lal Mirch's place. _"Questo è Visconti. Iemitsu?"_

Sawada frowns, and replies, in spotless Italian, "Visconti, where the hell have you been? CEDEF's been trying to contact all of you, any of you, for the past week."

_"Don't get smart with me, boy. I've been playing enforcer in Greece for the past month."_ The voice switches back to Japanese. Slightly accented. _"I only heard about this mess when your pretty-eyed agent dropped in to drip blood all over the carpet."_

Dino sucks in a breath. The gears are spinning in Sawada's eyes. "Who? You mean Wednesday?"

_"Is that what he's called? Hell if I know. He's comatose. His team'll pick him up, I'm assuming."_ In the background, Lal Mirch says something unintelligible. Visconti stops for a moment, then continues. _"I've tried to get a hold of the other Guardians, same as you. No luck there. Seems like the Varia's planned this through. Don't ask me how their people got wind of the coded lines."_

Reborn tips his fedora back. "So you can't contact the Ninth."

_"No,"_ replies Visconti.

"Mm. No luck on our side, either."

Lal Mirch takes over, her voice presiding over the sound of ruffling parchment. _"Sunday's team is out of duty. Tuesday is dead. Paris is still running damage control, though I doubt it's been effective—every family in Sicily, Naples, and Tunisia must know by now that Xanxus_ _is turning the game on its head. I have Indra's team setting up a counterattack at headquarters."_

Sawada looks thunderous. "I see. Indra's sent me the maps. Who's watching the Varia?"

_"We are. Turmeric and Oregano reported in a couple of hours ago. They said that Squalo stopped in Enna, most likely for further medical care. It looks like Belphegor is still accompanying him."_

"So Belphegor hasn't taken the rings to Xanxus himself? Why? Squalo's injuries are slowing both of them down. He knows that."

_"I'd assume that Belphegor is showing mercy. You know what would happen if Xanxus learned that Squalo failed to complete his duties, and Belphegor had to pick up his slack."_

"Showing mercy in itself is still unusual."

_"I never claimed to know how they think."_

_"One thing for sure, though,"_ Visconti cuts in after Lal Mirch, _"is that, judging by how things are, they'll get the fake rings to Xanxus in five days or less. Not only that, but Vongola's bureaucracy is compromised. The Timoteo I know would never allow Xanxus to get ahold of the inheritance, but given the ongoing trend…it's very likely that something or someone has corrupted the main house."_

Lal Mirch picks it up again. _"Once Xanxus learns that the rings are fake, he'll go to Namimori. And just like how the 'Ninth' ordered all main famiglia members to surrender to the Varia, the 'Ninth' will probably have recommended Xanxus as heir. That's what Xanxus will use as justification for taking the real rings. Even if you, Iemitsu, try to challenge that by electing your son as heir instead, it'll still end up resulting in—"_

"A conflict in the rings' ownership," Sawada concludes, one hand over his eyes, "which, as per tradition, is decided through one-on-one battles between the potential heirs and their Guardians." He shakes his head. "And this is definitive? You're sure that the Ninth will elect Xanxus as heir?"

_"We're saying 'most likely', which is basically yes,"_ Visconti replies. _"Of course, we know for a fact that anything the 'Ninth' orders at this point is entirely illegitimate. I have no doubt that Timoteo's voice has been hijacked. But seeing as we have no evidence that somebody else is speaking for him, it seems that, as of currently, you have no choice but to battle for the rings."_

Bianchi leans forward, tossing her hair over one shoulder. Jai catches the scent of snow and asters. "And you can't _find_ evidence?"

_"We'd have to have made more progress than this. Uprooting the Varia will take some time—certainly longer than what _you_ have."_

"So then, everyone's fate is practically sealed."

_"Yes. One-on-one duels."_

Dead silence. Jai lifts her gaze from the phone. Gokudera stares right back at her.

_It won't just be you, Tsuna, and Takeshi against them_, she'd said. _It's not like Dino and Fon and everyone else can't fight, too_, she'd said.

_They wouldn't put you guys up one-on-one against elite assassins_, she'd said.

Well.

Welllllllll.

Gokudera looks like he wants to flip her the bird. Jai tries to radiate an apology.

Dino rubs the back of his neck. "Okay, okay. If that's confirmed, what are the chances that the kids are going to survive? It's been two days so far, and we've got about five left. That's a week's worth of training. If we keep pushing them for five days—"

"They've been improving at phenomenal rates," Fon points out. "So quickly, in fact, that I wouldn't believe it possible if I weren't a witness to it myself. But, even so, in five days…"

Lal Mirch's voice has a certain irritable inflection to it._ "The Varia are at a much higher level than any of us could have ever expected. Their skill in battle is nothing like the reports suggest, not even the most recent ones. They surpass those suggestions by miles. It's proof enough that Basil was critically wounded by Squalo in a matter of seconds, but if you need more perspective, the reason we can only stall the Varia for such a short time is because they've incapacitated over half of our numbers and counting. It's near impossible to overestimate the severity of our situation here."_

Sawada sighs. Reborn's mouth twitches downward.

The CEDEF is a professional organization. Their members have probably been trained in their work for years. But here Lal Mirch is saying they've been practically decimated. So what does that say about the future of Tsuna and the others, who can only fit in about a week's worth of training?

"Ah," Jai says. "So, the kids are dead."

_"Well, yes," _answers Visconti. _"You'll have to think fast, now."_

Colonnello pipes up. Arms folded. "What if you had more manpower? A couple more people who could give the Varia a challenge?"

There's a slight crackle over the phone. _"There's no pool to draw from. No allied famiglia will step into a civil dispute. Too much possible backlash. Cavallone's the exception, of course, but he was called in to assist by a personal favor. Weren't you, boy?"_

The blond in question inclines his head in agreement. "That's right."

"Yeah, I know that, Visconti, you fuckin' pal," Colonnello snaps. His blue eyes are blazing. "What I'm saying is, _hypothetically_, what if you had someone over in Italy who has a good eye and an arm, no strings besides his tendons, and an itchin' to shoot down some sucker's plane?"

Everyone turns to stare at him. Jai raises both eyebrows. Oh. Ohhhh.

"Yeah, you see the picture I'm drawing?" He rolls his eyes. "Fucking world-class artist right here, kora."

_ "You know,"_ Lal Mirch muses, _"that's a surprisingly good idea."_

The Rain beams down at the phone on the counter. "Oi, Lal, ain't you got faith in me yet?"

Sawada shakes his head. "That won't work. If you go to Italy, then who'll train Sasagawa Ryohei?"

"Yeah, I've thought of that already, kora." Colonnello sits down. Firmly. Rests his wrists on his knees. "And I was thinking, hey, the kid's been into boxing since grade one. He's got a pretty good foundation, right? Sure, I can teach him how to punch through boulders or some shit, but if he wants to win his games, he needs a tutor who can work in close-combat. You know, someone who isn't pint-sized." He smirks. "And then I realized, shit, well, if we're talking about someone who can take my place, then there's this one _giant_ of a lady I know—"

Jai laughs.

"Oh," Skull says.

"You're kidding me," Gokudera groans.

"And this lady, see, is pretty damn good at punching people. Likes to play with fire, too. Pretty sure she's some kinda pyromaniac or something, but hey, don't ask me." Colonnello leans back with a grin. "You see where I'm going with this?"

She can see exactly where he's going with this. Heck, she's already hyped for it. "Yeah," she says, "yeah, I can do that!"

The Rain throws up a hand. "There, see? Jai's got me covered! Now just ship me off to Lal."

Sawada rubs at his stubble. "The rest of you are alright with this?" Quickly, he scans their group for disapproval. Finds none. "Colonnello, you realize that by joining arms with the CEDEF, you're also defying the Ninth's desires and, by extension, the desires of the main family. There's a chance that if CEDEF falls and the Varia takes full control of the reigns, you'll be put into a rather…precarious position—"

Colonnello rolls his eyes. "Yeah, whatever, keep talking shit. You say that like I got something to be afraid of. Vongola hasn't been a real threat since I was a pre-teen shooting ducks out of Tuscany." He jabs his thumb at a frowning Gokudera. "Besides, if I don't make some kind of move, he and his kid-boss are pretty much fucked over. You think I want them to die, or something?"

Tsuna's father looks surprised. "You care?"

"I've been practically living in your kid's house for the past year! 'Course I care, you idiot!"

_"If Colonnello comes here, we can definitely buy more time,"_ says Lal Mirch, apparently fed up with the pace of this conversation. _"However, even then, we won't be able to deter the Varia long enough for your kids to have a chance at this, Reborn. The CEDEF is simply too outmatched."_

To Jai's surprise, Reborn gives the phone a smirk. "I'll send Fon over too, then."

Fon smiles. Compared to everyone else, he looks like the happiest person in the world. "That's fine with me. Dino can handle Kyouya's training alone, at any rate."

Dino smiles back at him. It looks agonized. "I _despise_ you."

Visconti grunts over the line. _"That's two of the Arcobaleno on our side. That's fine. Your people might even stand a slightly better chance this way. Is that everyone you can send?"_

They glance at each other. Jai sips her tea again. Seems like it.

"Reborn-senpai can go," Skull mutters.

It's barely audible, but everyone hears it. Reborn cocks an eyebrow at him. "Me? Don't be stupid. Did you already forget that I'm Dame-Tsuna's tutor?"

The Cloud makes a flustered motion with his hands. "O-Of course I know that! But just because you're his 'home tutor' or whatever doesn't mean that—that you have to stay with him all the time! I mean, y-you could go to Italy to delay the Varia because then you'll be looking out for your student, anyway, so, you'd still be doing your job."

Bianchi scrunches her nose. "But then, with him gone, who would be here to teach Tsuna?"

Skull shrugs, as if it's plain as day. "I mean…his dad could."

A pause.

Reborn's eyes _light up._

Tsuna's father sees it. He jerks back, like the air is scalding him. _"No."_

Jai chokes on her tea. Colonnello is laughing. Fon looks like he's having the time of his life. "Hold on a second," Dino begins to say.

"Absolutely not," Sawada states, crossing his arms over his chest. The movement used to be imposing. Now it just seems defensive. "That can't happen, regardless. The Ninth forbade Reborn from attacking Vongola or any of its allies."

Visconti sounds amused. _"I wouldn't necessarily call the Varia an ally to anyone at this point, given their bloody streak these past few days. At any rate, if Reborn helps us squash this coup and uncover Xanxus's deceptions, I'm sure Timoteo will be quite forgiving."_

If Reborn were any other person, Jai thinks he'd probably be cackling his head off. Instead, he touches the brim of his hat, face so thoughtful it seems mocking. "I'd still be breaking his trust," he points out. "There's also the possibility that the Ninth truly _does_ want Xanxus to take his place, in which case I'd become a traitor and an enemy to the Vongola."

Lal Mirch scoffs. Over the phone, it sounds like a clinking coin. _"Do you really think the Ninth wants _that boy_ to rule his family?"_

_"We can't go against the one-on-one challenge without the rest of the family calling foul play on the inheritance," _Visconti muses. _"But this? This is about a contract between you and the Ninth. It's nobody else's business if you break it, here and now. Which you should seriously consider."_

The tutor tilts his head very seriously.

Colonnello laughs at that. "C'mon, bastard. You didn't swear loyalty to the Ninth, you swore it to the job he gave you. Technically, you're still carrying it out. By keeping your student safe, or whatever." A wicked grin. "Everyone's breaking everyone's hearts at this point, kora. Just look at how tangled up it's gotten! We're all in the same danger now, so who gives a shit? Are you a coward or not?"

Reborn lifts his coal-black gun. His eyes are sparkling. "Idiot. Let's see if there's any brain matter left to shoot out of your skull. Remember the last time you called me a coward?"

"Yeah, you bastard. You proved me _right_."

A split-second before the Sun can shoot, Sawada Sr. slaps his hand down onto the counter. There's a faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. "Enough! That's enough! There's no way I can approve this."

Nobody in the kitchen looks particularly inclined towards sympathy. "Of course _you_ can't," Fon agrees. "But Reborn is willing, and you do seem a little outnumbered here."

The man splutters. "This is—is—is ridiculous."

Colonnello is laughing so hard, he looks like he's in fits. Lal Mirch's voice could shrivel oceans. _"Not to us, sir."_

Visconti's rumbling laughter spits and pops through the speaker. _"Be a good sport, Iemitsu. You know, with Reborn here in Italy with us, I have full confidence that we'll be able to buy your boy just enough time."_

"Well, _that's_ fine, but I really think someone else _besides me_ should take over the teaching role—"

"Who? Who else is gonna help your kid? After Reborn leaves, there's nobody left!"

"Oh, for God's sake." Sawada leans against the counter, his narrowed eyes flickering around. "But I can't teach Tsuna. I cite the familiarity clause."

"There is no such clause," Fon corrects, and promptly downs the rest of his tea. He places the cup down with noticeable precision on the countertop. "Although, if you mean 'familiarity breeds contempt', I'm afraid there requires at least _some_ sense of 'familiarity' between you and your son before it can apply to you, in this case."

_Yow_. That's a third-degree burn right there.

The man sneaks the assassin a glare. "You know full well what I mean. Fathers shouldn't train their sons for this. It's dirty work."

Bianchi sighs. "Ah, 'pater peccavi.' You're a riot, Iemitsu." Beside her, Colonnello wipes delighted tears from his eyes.

_"Perhaps you should have washed your hands before touching the doorknob to your house, sir, if you care so dearly about hygiene these days." _Seems like Lal Mirch is the most merciless of them all. _"After this ordeal is over, I would recommend rinsing your son's blood off your hands before eating any more of your wife's cooking, as well."_

Dino, who was just getting ready to speak, closes his mouth so fast that Jai wonders if he bit his own tongue. Gokudera scowls at his nails. Even Jai has to glance away for moment, because holy cow, that was _sharp_. Briefly, she checks the window, the sugary frost patted in the corners of the panes.

Sawada doesn't react as strongly as she imagined, but the morning sunlight seems to drop from his face. "I _am_ your boss," he reminds the phone, his voice mild.

_"And I'm your eyes,"_ replies Lal Mirch in the same tone. _"My job is to have your back, and deal with your weak spots. Also, your stupidity."_

"It's not my weak spot we're dealing with. The idea that I could train Tsuna is—frankly, this shouldn't even be a viable option."

_"If Reborn, Colonnello, and Fon don't come to the CEDEF's aid, your son will die. If they do, your son might live. You don't put faith in smaller fates, Iemitsu. Nor even better ones."_

Sawada pinches the bridge of his nose. Breathes deep. Stays silent.

_"Your son is your weak spot,"_ Lal Mirch continues, _"because somehow, for some reason, you think you can manage perfectly fine if you just never turn around and look at him. Therefore, it is my job to deal with him. This is the only way. You should be prepared to make some sacrifices if you want me to do my job."_

He grunts. Sighs, slow, so very slow. Waves a hand.

_"I didn't hear anything, but if that wasn't a 'yes' of some kind, I will kill you, Iemitsu."_

Colonnello squints at the man. "No, that was a yes. Pretty reluctant one, but—"

_"Good. Let's wrap this up. Colonnello, we want you and the other two here in Catania before our day is wasted. Iemitsu, Oregano should have sent you a few files. Has Viper gotten back to anyone with some kind of intel?"_

Reborn rises to his feet, face blank. Somehow, the movement alone is visibly displeased. "Nothing yet. I've contacted other brokers, but their reports on the Varia are all the same, and inaccurate. Viper is the only one we're waiting on."

"We should've beaten them up before we left, made them tell us where they'd be going," Colonnello mutters. A shrug. "Well, whatever, kora. That asshole can't just ignore us forever."

_"Hm. Let's keep each other informed."_ Visconti's voice is faded, now. Farther away. _"Your second is putting me to work, Iemitsu, but trust me when I say that I'll find out what Timoteo's other Guardians have been up to. I'll let you know afterwards."_

"We'll see, then." Sawada reaches for the phone. "Is that it? Everything settled?"

_"For now."_

"Good luck, then."

_"And you, everyone."_

The phone clicks off. Gokudera and Dino rise to their feet. Jai scoops up a sleeping Lambo and hoists him into her arms. The Lightning Ring is only a glint in his hair.

"Alright," Sawada says, his shoulders hard—no longer sagging with the world's weight of fatherhood. "Reborn, Fon, Colonnello, the three of you will need a plane. Gokudera, Dino, you'll head back to your training. Skull and Bianchi, to your respective positions, and you, Jai…"

Colonnello is laughing again. "Well…" Sawada eyes her with great care. "I suppose we've finally found a good place for you."

* * *

Wednesday, mid-morning. The fields are white, the rocks blue, touched by a tiny death knell. Sasagawa Ryohei wakes up. Blinks the slashes of ice from his eyes. Shakes the frost from his hair. "JAI!" he exclaims. "It's EXTREMELY good to see you! Where's—Where's Master?"

Jai beams down at him. "Colonnello is busy, so I'm taking his place." She punches her knuckles into her palm, sees the glimmer of a half-ring on his finger. "Time for training, sleepy-head! How 'bout it? You ready to get owned?"

Ryohei's eyes are _shining._

* * *

**. . .**

* * *

**Endnotes: **it's the varia arc! kinda! we're still stuck in the antebellum, i guess.

you know, i swore at the start that i would treat iemitsu kinder than most other fics do, but even if jai doesn't throw shade, it looks like everyone ELSE ended up beating him down anyway. it sort of wrote itself. my apologies!

one really bad decision i made at the start of this fic was choosing not to describe jai's physical appearance until a long ways later. sorry about that! so far it's been mildly mentioned in ch.1 that she's got brown hair, and in ch.11 that her skin is brown too, but you're also guaranteed a much more detailed description of her when we get to other POVs during the future arc.

this fic just surpassed 100k words! thank you very much for reading, being patient, and for your excellent praise and criticism. it's been more than a year since this story was first posted, which is pretty incredible, but that also means that my own interests have become less focused on KHR/manga/anime/general fanfiction as time goes on. naturally it's getting progressively harder to push through each chapter these days, but i do mean it when i say that i'm not giving up! this is a project that i have always thought very fondly of and i will continue to see it through to the end. thank you!


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